just get a room and get it over with for God's sakes ...

• Posted by: Bill Hazelton
• February 11, 2008 5:00 PM

Sounds like all the makings of a "Hostile Take Over". Yahoo should let Google handle the search portion of it and dedicate themselves to expand their banner ads and increase their ad revenue all across. After all they have the "Eyeballs" (Boy, that sounds so passe).

• Posted by: Ed Burckhardt
• February 11, 2008 7:11 PM

I'm wondering, why no one is discussing another Option.
Why doesn't Yahoo propose some kind of strategic alliance towards Microsoft. They could bring their search bizz and online advertising systems together (but keeping the rest of Yahoo out of scope) and form a strong competitor to google.
Microsoft would get the marketshare in search without having to make this big invest, what surely will be benefited by Wall Street. They also would'nt have to face the problems of bringing two totally different enterprise cultures together what probably would lead to loosing all the good Yahoo! people (maybe even loosing them to google would be pretty contraproductive).
Yahoo on the other side could keep it's independence without having to admit, that it lost in fields of search against google.
I think in the long run it's better to be a strong second source in search, instead of fraternising with the marketleader and becoming an rather unimprotant inoffical attachement to google.

• Posted by: André
• February 12, 2008 12:55 AM

Yahoo should let Google handle the search portion of it and dedicate themselves to expand their banner ads and increase their ad revenue all across.

I am totally against this. I think the web would be significantly less than what it is today if Yahoo gave up search. I always rotate my searches, so that I understand not only what I get from Google, but what I get from Yahoo, MS, Ask, etc. Amazingly enough, I also get lots of relevant results from some of these other search engines.. in quantities nearing the quantities from Google (esp. in the case of Yahoo). But the interest thing is: The relevant results I get on Yahoo are *different* relevant results than the ones I get on Google! But they are nevertheless still relevant!

Losing Yahoo's search would mean a significant loss in diversity on the web, and I can't believe that anyone would even consider it.

• Posted by: JG
• February 12, 2008 7:47 AM

"This all seems like kabuki to me." I don't believe a Kabuki metaphore applies. This inplies Yahoo! and Microsoft are collaborating closely and acting in a scripted manner. I'm no legal expert but I imagine it would probably be in violation of statutes regulating the securities industry. I think high stakes poker game would be a better comparison.

• Posted by: ned
• February 12, 2008 11:07 AM

Would seem to me that MS could using search as the trojan horse, of sorts...a bigger battle they are fighting is to aggregate enough users (mail, web apps, etc) to force in their mail, their XPS, their messenger, their mobile OS, etc. And the billions along the way are great...but they have $20B at risk in OS and apps in the commercial and consumer markets.

• Posted by: Jeff Tadie
• February 12, 2008 8:50 PM

I agree that it has become boring as a story. It seems pretty obvious that it's becoming a hostile takeover, that it will probably go through, and that it will break Yahoo in the process. MS is trying to buy what they have not been able to earn, which shows a pretty deep misunderstanding of what search is all about.

• Posted by: Hiroko
• February 13, 2008 4:40 AM

the best thing for them to do is to polish their own algo. to get back on the SE industry competition

• Posted by: SEO Solutions
• February 13, 2008 12:24 PM