It’s that time of year, here’s mine:

1. Kiva will break $100m in loans
2. Microsoft will buy Facebook
3. Google will buy Delicious
4. Microsoft will buy what’s left of Yahoo
5. Jerry Yang will leave Yahoo for good
6. Steve Jobs will step down as Apple CEO
7. Social networking will crack its business model
8. Google’s share of online advertising dollars will fall

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I haven’t written about Yahoo for a while because there is nothing to write about. Yahoo is dying.

Mike Arrington reported the latest stock drop, it now stands at $13 after turning down $31 from Microsoft. With the markets in turmoil everything is down good and bad. But while most tech stocks will come back stronger Yahoo will not make it.

The basic problem is management. As CEO the buck stops with Jerry Yang. He is not a leader and it shows. He is constantly looking over his shoulder and conducting reviews. In this position a leader should know what needs to be done, have a plan and get on with it.

You can get away with muddled management in a truly great company. I don’t have that much more faith in Eric Schmidt, the money machine was in place when he got on board and he has done not much except ride it. Google has such a great business that it doesn’t matter that the rest of their plans go off half cock. You can’t get away with it in a company that is in trouble. Great leaders can turn around ailing companies. Look at Steve Jobs, Apple was on the floor when he went back, arguably in a worse position than Yahoo was in when Yang took back the reins, and it skyrocketed after he went back. Say what you like about him but Steve Jobs knows where he is going, when he went back to Apple he didn’t need 100 days to sort it out. He knew what to do before he arrived.

The dam starts to crack. Rumours around HP suggest they are building their own OS. Perosnally I wouldn’t bother doing it myself if I was HP. On occasions like these you go to the specialists and in that case it means Canonical. They have years of experience building a consumer friendly version of Linux. In fact I don’t think hardware manufacturers building operating systems is a good idea.

At this stage everyone cites the example of Apple but the fact is their refusal to license any Mac OS contributed to Microsoft’s dominance in the first place. Hardware and software are two different things and I think having companies focused on one or the other is the best way. Some may argue that this is not the case with mobile and give Android’s difficulties as the prime example. The counterargument is Symbian and it’s a pretty good one.

Apple seem to have set their stall out as a niche manufacturer come what may. This is not a criticism, someone has to be the Mercedes of the tech world and someone else the Toyota. I am always skeptikal about one company trying to control all aspects of a system and I think it is better for the consumers when different companies establish common standards and promote competition between application developers. This also allows companies building operating systems to focus on what they are good at.

Microsoft is getting in to trouble now because it is too cumbersome to lead in any of the emerging markets. It is compounding the problem by trying to add even more weight when it should be trying to shed it and trying to get into markets it has no hope of cracking like search.

Pic: fattytuna