Alex Gomes >> Blog

Can’t beat your competitors in search, have declining revenue? Paranoia about next big thing wiping you out? Well issue threat to the next big thing. You tried lawsuit already, that didn’t work.

Yahoo and Ebay has formed strategic partnership, very short of a merger. As I mentioned earlier, its been rumored for some time. I think Yahoo is the primary loser of the deal, since Ebay is kind of a lost cause when fighting Google. The devils are in the details.

Search and Advertising:

Yahoo will provide Overture ads and search results for Ebay: Ahh! Yahoo should create a good search engine. Don’t bribe companies to use your search engine. At least bribe them for a reasonable product. Will any one stop using Google because Ebay uses Yahoo? This must been some Kalifornia thing.

Integrated Commerce Payment System:

Yahoo will use PayPal: What? You are going to give up to 3% of transaction fee to Ebay. Yahoo, you can create your own PayPal and make more money then you your video, tech news, shopping etc combined! Ohh and don’t forget to give all your YPN publisher name and details to PayPal. I guess that list would be great when Microsoft buys Ebay.

Co-Branded eBay Toolbar:

Ebay has a toolbar? OMG. So Yahoo is going to replace its spyware with Ebay’s spyware. At least you should have bargained for co-branded Yahoo toolbar.

“Click-to-Call” Advertising Functionality:

You gotta be kidding me. Is this a pipe dream from Kalifornia? Do you know the demographic of Instant Messenger? Teenagers. Because they don’t have jobs or money. You expect them to call your advertisers. Better yet you expect these advertisers to pay you for this demographic to call them.

And people wonder about Excite, AltaVista, etc.

The fight between search engine domination was started by Google. First Google launched Google Toolbar for Firefox. Then they started paying publishers referral fee for downloading Firefox. In return Firefox make money for you searching Google from the browser (search bar on the top left). Then Google started paying Dell 1 billion dollar for installing Google toolbar on Dell machines. In Safari Google is almost impossible to change from default search engine. Google then took 5% ownership on AOL, so that AOL would use Google Search.

Microsoft in return put a search bar on IE 7+ with MSN search as default. Alexa then dropped Google from there search. Alexa’s parent company Amazon, then dropped Google from A9. Its also rumored Ebay is in talks with Yahoo.

All this followed by Marisa Mayer from Google, screaming anti-trust. More fun is yet to come.

Microsoft is in talks with Yahoo to have some kind of merger. This would make no. 1 Yahoo and no. 3 MSN more competitive to the challenge posed by Google

I don’t think its going to happen anytime soon, because the price tag for Yahoo would be more than $45 billion. It would make one the most expensive acquisition in history.

It would not work if Microsoft partially invest in the company(like 20% stake). Since the web is the future, Microsoft has to go all the way or not at all. Microsoft would not be able to keep one leg in MSN and another leg in Yahoo. Two brands would just compete with each other.

Now Microsoft doesn’t have any choice. Microsoft has to take the leadership on the web or cease to exist, in a sector where its not been successful. Make no mistake, Google OS is on its way. If its successful, it would kill the cash cow Windows and Office. $45 billion acquisition in that light for $242 billion company is not that big price to pay for the survival of Microsoft.

Google screams anti-trust.

Marisa Mayer from Google hit headlines recently for the comment:

“The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on the quality of their search services,” Marissa Mayer, the vice president for search products at Google, told the Times. “We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.”

What it means is that, Google is pursuing ant-trust action again Microsoft for MSN Search being default in IE 7+.

Well this was expected sooner later based on the track record of Microsoft.

The interesting part was however completely different.

First, Google pursuing anti-trust so soon, even before Microsoft officially launching IE 7+. This shows the mental preparedness on part of Google and willingness to fight the hard and dirty way.

Secondly, Microsoft getting the support from the webmasters and tech community instead of Google. And that’s putting it mildly. I would go even further and say webmasters were outright hostile against Google. Something unthinkable in the late 90’s. The tide has turned. Google has lot of work to do in improving relationship with webmasters.