"Yahoo has acquired Oddpost. A couple of weeks ago I got a heads-up that this deal had been consumated and would be announced shortly. Little did I imagine then that they would pick a Friday evening to make the announcement, but that's the way it goes. It's a big one. Oddpost turned the idea of what you could do with a browser upside down, by producing a clone of Microsoft Outlook in JavaScript and DHTML running in MSIE. Since then, they have labored in relative obscurity, growing a customer base, raising VC money, adding people, and staying out of the way. Then Google launches Gmail, with a very Oddpostish interface, and someone at Yahoo says "Hmmm, I've seen that somewhere," calls up Ethan and Iain and their new VCs and asks "Are you for sale?" and the rest is history. Now Google has competition on elegance of user interface. Sorry the announcement comes at such an awkard time, everyone in the tech press must be getting in their cars and driving to the beach or the mountains. Congrats to the Oddpost guys, and their users and investors, and congrats to Google for getting some new worthwhile competition. Now who is Microsoft going to buy?"