No, in 2008 Yahoo was already seen as a failed company. The biggest mistake they did in the late 90's is to stop being a tech company and be a "media company"

No, in 2008 Yahoo was already seen as a failed company. The biggest mistake they did in the late 90's is to stop being a tech company and be a "media company" instead. So in 2008 they were still big but mostly running on momentum they built during the 90's and a couple acquisitions. They had Yahoo!Mail that was popular, their homepage was still popular because some people forgot to try something different, Flickr that they bought and was the most successful photo sharing website until the got overtaken by general purpose social networks, and Yahoo!Japan that was hugely popular but was a joint venture with Softbank. Maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting... But they didn't have anything that made people dream. Right before 2008 they tried to join the social bandwagon with a horizontal social network across their properties, but it failed just like when Google tried to do the same a couple of years later with Google+. However, as much as Yahoo was seen as a failed company, Microsoft didn't get their Nadella rebirth yet. It was still an old evil outdated company, run by Balmer, mocking the iPhone and claiming their Windows CE phones with their tiny start button and stylus were better. So Microsoft didn't look super sexy either. It really looked like 2 losers trying to band together to fight the cool winner that Google was.