My Theory on Yahoo-MSN Merger

I got this email from a client sort of Joking about a Google possibly buying yahoo. I don't think it would happen as it would be just as much of an anti-trust issue for Google to own MSN and therefore have 90% of the ad revenues online. But someone made the antitrust comment to me regarding MSN buying Yahoo. I don't buy this. MSN has 10% Market share of search, Google has 70. MSN going to Yahoo will once again level the playing field and maybe buy some Miracle the two can combine forces to create some pretty neat online features.

Case 1: Hotmail vs Yahoo Mail - Hotmail is the worst ever. Yahoo mail is pretty sweet since they released the new one. Gmail is cool for searching but organizationally can get sloppy. The Gmail craze is more or less a result of people pledging allegiance to the Google brand, much like MAC heads. Having a Gmail account is a sign of being an uber tech savvy type. Much like friendster met its demise by myspace, and myspace has met its demise to facebook. The same thing can happen with mail.

Case 2: I Google vs My Yahoo - Arguments can be made in favor of each as google calender is pretty sweet, but yahoo feeds and news seem to have more homey feel to their portal.

Yahoo Fantasy Sports - Anyone out there that is involved in this knows how great of a portal this is. Google has nothing like it and will never have it because people that work at Google don't like sports.

I encourage people to visit Yahoo.com and click on the stuff on the left. Those portals are pretty sweet, and very targeted, a great place for paid ads that are thoughtfully placed.

In the end when the Google hype dies down then there may be a chance for little old Yahoo to pick up the pieces. Below is the email i sent to my client in response to his Google buying Yahoo comment.

Talk around here is Google will not buy Yahoo. It is in Yahoo's best interest to side with MSN and take on Google. Google is moving into software development as well OS development. Basically they would offer free software and computer operating systems and pay for it by displaying ads. If Yahoo and MSN would combine they can gain some competitive advantage on Google and make for a stronger competitor and roll out the same free software type packages and make money by ads. As a search engine Yahoo has a chance as they have lots of neat portals and features people just need to start using them and MSN has millions of customers using their operating systems so could easily force people into viewing Yahoo ads. I really hope that MSN and Yahoo can make some stuff happen.

-p-