A short time ago I changed my mind however because I am hoping that Microsoft will spend so much money on this deal that it will ultimately contribute to their demise.

Why would I want Microsoft to die? Because they are no longer a technology leader and we need new blood in the computer technology industry. As long as Microsoft is around we will stay mired in legacy technologies that have run out of steam. Intel and other brand CPUs will remain x86 compatible and this has a domino effect on all other microelectronic areas like RAM and video graphics chip research.

As long as Microsoft is around they will also forever keep trying to steer the world towards proprietary and closed architectures that stifle true software innovation.

Another reason is that I guess you could say I was a Star Trek fan. What the hell does this have to do with Microsoft? Well I don’t remember ever seeing anyone buy software on any Star Trek episode or movie. It seems that software in a Star Trek future was free and open source and that kind of makes sense in that future doesn’t it?

Science Fiction has a knack for coming true, not always, but often enough for me to believe that the world really needs to be more open in software development as well as other areas for civilization to advance.

So what does all this have to do with taking Google’s cash and going shopping? I read today that Google has struck a deal with Salesforce.com. In a story at News.com Cnet also reports that Microsoft is planning a release of their own Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.

While Microsoft is busy buying Yahoo, Google ought to consider the outright purchase of Salesforce, integrate it entirely into their existing online office product range (Gmail, Calendar, Google Talk and Google Apps) and cut the price for the Salesforce license by 50 percent or more. Free would be the best if that is somehow doable from Google’s side.

So while Microsoft is so busy adding products similar to what it already has in it’s portfolio, Google would be adding something new and very useful to theirs. My guess is that Salesforce can be had for less than Microsoft is intending to spend on Yahoo.

With Salesforce in Google’s hands they would be in a great position to introduce CRM to a whole new audience and a huge open source development community. I can only image the innovation that could be born of this.

So let’s go shopping Google.

Anyway, I run a few web sites and I also do web development so I find myself testing different search engines to see how a particular site is ranking. I also consult others on getting their business web sites higher in the search engine rankings so I try to stay informed on the most popular search engines and their idiosyncrasies.

Recently I have noticed a drastic difference in the search results for these three search engines.

Relevance. Usually when you use a search engine you really want to see results that are relevant to your search words or phrase. I would say that a few years ago, 2003?, after Microsoft revamped Live.com that their search results were more relevant than the results from a Google search. Recently it seems that Live.com has lost that edge and Google has really improved. I am not sure exactly when this happened, but it is noticeable.

In my opinion Yahoo! has never been a very good search engine. Maybe they only have one or two bots cruising around the web updating it's index because it is very slow to notice changes to web site, or even to get newly launched sites into their index in the first place. I used to know some people who used Yahoo! but they kind of sucked so it just seemed to be a good fit for them.

See for yourself. Next time you need to search for something try a few different search engines using the exact same keywords or phrase and see how your results stack up. For me as I write this Google is definitely the leader in relevance and, in my opinion, the winner.