Mitch Kapor: Microsoft+Yahoo, major integration challenge

Veteran of software wars Mitch Kapor shared his views on the cultural challenges facing Microsoft in its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo with me. Mitch, a founder of Lotus as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Open Source Software Founder, thinks that the integration challenge and cultural differences are significant hurdles to making 1+1=3.

He also offers his opinion on Google's role in the landscape and Microhoo on the search giant:

"If any company has the capacity to do both and good and harm, it's Google because I believe they are going to continue to push the edge of the envelope in terms of what they offer and how they offer. They are the defining company of the era."

"Even if it succeeds, I don't think a Microsoft-Yahoo combination is going to define the industry or what it's about. It's just going make a more powerful competitor against Google."

He also comes up with an assessment of when we might know if Facebook has really jumped the shark:

"If and when there are Facebook apps that have sustaining value that large numbers of people continue to come back to time and time again, that will be an indicator that Facebook as a platform has real power and as an ecosystem it can get to a central place."