The Microsoft-Yahoo deal to take on Google announced now is worth looking at. And the jury is still out on whether it will do any good for Microsoft or Yahoo. There is no certainty in this at all.
Basically, the deal gives Microsoft an exclusive 10-year licence to Yahoo's core search technologies, with the option of integrating Yahoo search technologies into its existing web search platforms. Yahoo sites will use Microsoft's Bing (which stands for
"Bing is not Google") as their search platform and Microsoft will compensate Yahoo through a revenue sharing agreement based on traffic generated on Yahoo's network of sites.
The Seeking Alpha site makes the point that Yahoo comes off second best and that it's an indictment of the company's bone-headed strategy. "What's their key advantage except simply milking what's left of their past popularity? They become a portal site with email, and a nice finance site. But to me, they are slowly moving down the value chain if indeed they decide to use Bing instead of their own search. If this happens, to me it proves the failure of Yahoo's strategy over the last years. All the money they wasted on sideline portal ideas, they should have been plowing into search innovation. Clearly it matters, search isn't such just a commodity, if in the end they need to use Bing."
The problem with the deal, as I see it, is that the two companies are integrating two different search engines and the history of mergers would suggest they would have their work cut out for them merging vast and often incompatible pieces of Web data. That could take years and by then, Google might be even further in front.
Furthermore, Bing has a long way to go to catch up. As ComputerWorld reports, Bing's share of the search market is a paltry 7.28% compared with Google's massive 78.48%.
Looking at the deal, it only makes sense from the perspective screwing Yahoo and putting itself in second place.
no comment untill now