Today’s big news is that Microsoft made a $44.6bn takeover bid for Yahoo! And I thought Yahoo! was so 90’s.

If the deal goes ahead, will it have implications related the visual programming? We all know that NI is the leading developer of visual programming languages with its LabVIEW integrated programming language and development environment. However neither Microsoft nor Yahoo! have been completely quiet in this scene. Yahoo! has developed a domain specific visual programming environment Yahoo! Pipes for aggregating web feeds and other online information resources. Microsoft has developed a little similar tool, Mashup Creator, for their Popfly online web development environment. In addition Microsoft has a product called Microsoft Robotics Studio for robotics application development.

Even though the products of both Microsoft and Yahoo! are rather simple and restricted, they indicate that visual programming is slowly coming of age. However consolidation of services from the two companies doesn’t necessarily mean anything good for a minor field like visual programming. It’s very plausible that projects like Popfly and Pipes end up dead when giants like Microsoft and Yahoo integrate their organizations.

What do you think? Will Microsoft’s possible deal with Yahoo! have implications in the field of visual programming?