So, I just had to laugh when our designer (the attractive and talented Stephen Blake) came up with the graphic for this story:

http://mp3.com/story/feature_matchoo2.html

I think today was a record on the number of people who emailed me the story, and I realized this afternoon that I don't really know what to think. It was inevitable, I suppose, and we have all known that Yahoo was going to open a store ever since they posted a job for a Product Manager for a Digital Music Store. I think Elliot has a good tack on the unseen angle here… the dreaded name that strikes fear into all audio software developers… Thomson! I remember when I was working on a media player (remember Sonique anyone?), and my jaw dropped when I found out how much you had to pay Thomson per install – - its good to own patents. As far as the future… hard to say. Merging two companies/technologies can be a big head-ache, but Yahoo has done it before. Was the price too high? Maybe… but its all about leverage… last time I checked Launch was the second biggest music site on the web.