Will 1+1=3 for Microsoft and Yahoo, or prove, as most mergers do, that synergy is not a good bet for investors? Will it distract Google? Will the good folks at Yahoo! even stick around to find out? Here's what I think http://tinyurl.com/mbb39t YOu?
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Leonid L
Software Engineer at Linedata Services
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1+1 = 1.2
DAVE M
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HAIRCUT ONE HUNDRED Love PLUS ONE 1982
Sorry, I'm also a DJ...
With the current offerings they have, they have no prayer of even overtaking Google. They have to start thinking about pooling their resources into innovating new search products and advertisements even before the ink dries. I am not sure how will this work out, but I can imagine it involving the next generation of SaaS tools, e.g stick a Bing search box in the next version of MS Office.
i'd say 1+1=0.8 in thsi case. lots of energy wasted on the merger taking away from their existing busienss and i don't expect to see any return from it.
they might get somewhere technically and have a real search engine with decent results, but adoption will be more than a challenge...
Raja Shankar K
Thinker about Software and Technology
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I had a few thoughts on this myself at the link below.
Links:
Greg P
President ♦ Bluefin Productions Inc.
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Ask the folks at AOL and Time Warner.
There are a lot of examples of large companies with corporate cultures that do NOT match attempting to merger.
It's a bad marriage. And the deal is for TEN years. That should give Microsoft enough time to truly screw up the Yahoo folks.
That is, those that stay.
I think the combination of the two companies may help at the back end but lets face it, that is not where their problem lies. Their problem is in the consumer choice to use Google.
I used to work for Lycos and Hotbot, some of the first big and successful search engines. At that point the consumers were mostly on dialup and looking for speed and relevance, that is what Google provided which gave them a significant market share. The issue that Bing and Yahoo have is that now it is not about their product, and the speed or relevance of that product, it is about the habit.
The Google habit is what these guys need to break in order to acquire consumers. If they can acquire consumers (and the right consumers at that) then they have a chance of taking market share from Google and becoming more worthwhile to work with for advertisers which = revenue.
Streamlining the back end wont do anything until they can get the consumers to try the products and get them clicking on paid links.
The cost to MSFT and Yahoo to get a customer to change from one engine (google) to another (them) is going to be astronomical.
My humble opinion would be that they take the money they have put aside to advertise their search capability and publicize the areas they have which can beat Google, their content, their services etc. When a user is on Yahoo or MSN they are more likely to use their search engine from habit.
That way they can fight a battle they have a chance of winning which is in stopping consumers going to Google in the first place because they are already on their properties.
if it comes down to search on search then I think that battle has gone and been won in the majority of global markets.
