Is a Microsoft Buy Out Yahoo’s Best Chance for Survival?

There are two sad facts in search today:

  1. Yahoo! has been a great company and done some wonderful things
  2. The “mostly not evil” Google is only increasing their domination of the market, growing to a monopoly

Yahoo! can’t beat Google. Microsoft can’t beat Google. Perhaps, combined they could give them some competition?

Yes, I know this is not an original idea, and there have always been rumors of talks, but looking over past history I think it is time someone on either side really put some thought into it.

Microsoft hasn’t had a great time, what with Vista and Office releases failing to set the world alight and Google eating into their mind share. Yahoo! … well, what good news have they had?

In fact, I am not sure Yahoo!, a company I still root for, couldn’t have created worse PR if they had tried.

Yahoo! owns some great properties, such as Flickr, plus can still claim brilliant staff, such as the Zonetag team. Between them they have potential to give them a platform within reach of owning half of search (combined they would start with roughly 40% of search traffic). Microsoft is more and more looking to web delivery of software and services so the old arguments of “desktop software versus web services” is becoming less of an issue.

What do you think?

Posted on December 20, 2007 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Microsoft

Comments

6 Responses to “Is a Microsoft Buy Out Yahoo’s Best Chance for Survival?”

  1. Uwe Hook on December 20th, 2007 6:26 pm

    Yahoo! should not focus on search. Instead, they should focus on being an entertainment portal with strong social tools.

  2. Tony on December 20th, 2007 8:00 pm

    Yahoo still holds the #1 ranked site in terms of traffic (according to Alexa). I am a big fan of Yahoo, but like a lot of the recent Google acquisitions. MicroHoo, doesn’t have a nice ring to it…

    It like playing Monopoly, once you get all of the condos and houses built up, you’re unstoppable. Google is just about to that point. The only thing that may bring them down is trying to do too much without keeping up the level of standards in their offerings.

  3. Greg on December 20th, 2007 9:32 pm

    I think that’s a great idea. A convicted predatory monopolist joining forces with a company that willingly cooperates with one of the most oppressive nations on planet earth, and then lies about it.

    What could possibly go wrong there?

  4. Chris Garrett on December 20th, 2007 9:33 pm

    @Uwe - Without search will they lose audience though?

    @Tony - Yes you could say they are over-stretching. While they have some brilliant “bits”, Google Earth especially, Picasa, quality and success varies a great deal. But you can say that for Y! and MS too :)

  5. Aaron Stroud on December 20th, 2007 10:59 pm

    @Tony, Google can never become a monopoly. Monopolies have “the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.” The only way Google could have “exclusive control” is by government fiat, outlawing alternative search engines.

    Google does dominate the search engine field and they’re making huge profits because of it. Those same profits are attracting competitors that will one day unseat Google.

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