In case you were concerned about me, I didn't miss yesterday's news about the proposed Microsoft takeover of my Sunnyvale neighbor, Yahoo!. I just felt that with everyone on the planet, and some in other planets, for sure, talking about it, I'd not only be lost in the noise, but seen as a me-too blogger, which I'm trying to avoid. But we saw it. And we think it'd be a mess.

(Peek at TechMeme for yesterday's million headlines)

Microsoft's goals with a Yahoo! acquisition are clear - try to become relevant in the Web space, including search and social networking. The company saw Yahoo!'s recent dysfunction and hoped to get the company on the cheap, while taking on Google in a more aggressive way. But this won't help their position against the competition, and may actually make the situation worse.

But, if you're Google, a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance is just about the best thing that ever happened to you. It would combine two of the most confused and unfocused competitors you have, guarantees months to years of integration issues and slowed product development, concern about layoffs and jockeying for position amid increased political infighting. It wouldn't promise improved innovation and technology that would threaten your leadership, but instead take two companies with varying cultures and ask them to beat you together, where individually, they have failed.

If you're Apple, you see Microsoft aligning with Yahoo!, making Google more likely to align with you, which can only be good. You see the company who designed the Zune hook up with the company whose Yahoo! Music offerings went absolutely nowhere. You hope the company keeps making Mac Office, but you've got two backup plans, with your iWork suite, and Google Office.

While Yahoo! once had the leadership position on the Web, and still leads in a few areas, including population on Yahoo! Mail, and a good portion of the portal space, they've fallen behind everywhere else, the exceptions being their smart acquisitions of Web companies like Flickr, MyBlogLog and Del.icio.us. Microsoft never could get there, and while they still own the world's most popular and most hated browser, in Internet Explorer, they've had very little success anywhere else. Even their massive acquisition of Hotmail has turned out to be an unrespected joke.

A Microsoft and Yahoo! combo would have the world's most popular operating system, and the world's most popular office application suite. You could presumably layer on top of that Yahoo!'s widgets, acquired from Konfabulator. You could then integrate Outlook with Yahoo! Mail, and combine MSN search and portal efforts with those of Yahoo!, but just look at what's happened with all the other search acquisitions on Yahoo!'s side: Alta Vista, Inktomi, and Overture, for starters.... have they made Yahoo! better and more popular than Google? No.

A Microsoft/Yahoo! merger would take two tech titans, remove one, and make the combined offering less successful and less innovative than the combined efforts of the original. It'd give Google a free pass and extend their head start. It'd eliminate thousands of overlapping jobs, and send many smart folks out on the street or off to new start-ups. But if Yahoo! knows what's good for it, it'll reject the underpowered Microsoft offer outright, tell Ballmer to pound sand, and take a renewed effort toward integrating its own services and competing aggressively in the market. I just hope they're smart enough to say "No Deal".

This morning, my wife and I watched the funeral ceremony for recently-deceased Mormon church leader Gordon B. Hinckley, live, streaming on the Web, via the church-affiliated broadcast network, BYU TV. While I've mentioned BYU TV a few times before, including in mentioning the church's semi-annual General Conference, this morning's experience was a very touching presentation, which showed where one era in the church was ending, and another was set to begin.

Having grown accustomed to the choppiness of Web video, graininess, or buffering, the contrast between that subpar experience and what BYU TV offers is worth the visit alone. At any point, I could pause the broadcast, hit the "Go Live" button to be fully caught up, or I could even click the schedule on the right side of the screen to see the programming leading into the funeral ceremony, or other content.

The way BYU TV handles television programming for the Web is the way all broadcast networks should, commercial or otherwise - giving the viewer both the option to watch live programming, or video on demand, with full start/stop functionality. That we could utilize such strong technology while also seeing a historic event was very fulfilling, knowing I wasn't compromising on the experience simply for convenience.

Hickley presided over the church for 15 years. In his time as church leader, 1/3rd of the church's current membership was baptized, and the number of temples on the Earth grew to 124, with #125, in Rexburg, Idaho, originally scheduled to be dedicated today, being delayed a week due to Hinckley's death.

As the church leaders noted in today's broadcast, there will be no jockeying for position as to who will assume the position of prophet, seer and revelator for the next era. There will be no back-room discussions or canvassing for support. The succession plans are dictated by scripture, and will follow as they have for centuries. While we're already amazed by the way the church has adapted to be on the cutting edge of today's technology, it's even more remarkable to think of where they will be at the end of the next era.

The event of president Hinckley's funeral is available to the world via BYU.tv. Go to www.byu.tv, and find the broadcast from 11 a.m. MST today.

Just yesterday, I suggested that ReadBurner was, by far, the most impressive product to debut on the Web so far in 2008. Of course, given that was in January, the change in the calendar to February 1 could also mean a change of luck. Around midnight last night, I was unable to check in on ReadBurner and see the most shared posts or those getting momentum - and was halfway through e-mailing the developer behind the site, when I figured he probably already knew about it.

Of course, he is aware of the issue, and provided an update this morning on the ReadBurner blog. (See: ReadBurner Down)

"I knew this would happen sooner or later: ReadBurner is down. My Amazon instance crashed. Argh…"

Never one to miss an opportunity to add features, Alexander says he may restart the service from scratch, eliminate double items once and for all, and build improved language filters. The expected time to restart is about three hours. Looking forward to its return.

January 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,187

Total stories published in January: 58
(About 1.9 per day, up from 1.8 in December)

Total stories in January with comments: 37
(64% of all stories, up from 27 and 49% in December)

Total comments on January posts: 142
(About 2.4 per post, 3.8 per commented post)

Technorati Authority Ranking: 191 (up 65)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 438 subscribers (up 232)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 20 subscribers (up 5)
MyBlogLog Members: 50 (up 11)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12: 1st overall, and a new record! (By far)

Blog Value Estimator: $107,827.14


January 2008 was one new record after another - more than 3x December.

Top Five Most Visited January Stories (According to Analog)

1. Mashable Uses A-List Power to Steal B-List Buzz
2. Can We Talk About Twitter for a Second?
3. ReadBurner, In Stealth Mode, Looking to Sort Shared Feed Items
4. Google Honors Building Blocks of the Non-Web Kind
5. I Don't Care About Macworld This Year

Others receiving votes: ReadBurner Keeps Improving With Stats and Upcoming Items, Robert Scoble to Kick Off Fast Company TV Wednesday, Mashable Promises to Upgrade Linking Policies, and The Data Ownership Wars Are Heating Up...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech
2. Soft-Core Porn, Sex Themes Power Google Video
3. Watch Every Episode of The Simpsons Online - Free
4. Scoble's Link Blog Delivers An Influential 1 Percent
5. The Mac's Role In My Getting Married

January was a huge month for the blog, and intimidating in a few ways. As previously mentioned in The Downside to Raised Blog Expectations, I can't help but feel some pressure that comes with knowing the site's gaining momentum. We more than tripled our traffic in January versus the prior month, which in turn was the previous record. To put things in perspective, there were four individual days in January which had more visitors than all of January 2007's monthly total. That's ridiculous. Year over year, we're looking at growth above 1,000 percent. In the month, we got even more geeky, surprisingly. We helped launch ReadBurner, Rating Burner and Shared Reader. We announced Robert Scoble's Fast Company move before he did. We started working with fellow B-Listers on a custom Elite tech news Reddit. We had a public spat with one of the most-prominent blogs, and later made up. We gave up and finally joined Twitter. We remain addicted to FriendFeed and Google Reader, but are tantalized by AssetBar, and have enjoyed the early testing there. But while January was huge, trust me, we're not done. I've got some ideas already for February. Hope to see you here.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed, or keep watch on our shared link blog!