Why Microsoft needs Yahoo
07/07/08 10:03 am Paid SearchHere’s a very compelling argument on why Microsoft needs Yahoo. Even if their search technology (live.com) is comparable to Google’s, it becomes academic if they can’t achieve more scale. Yahoo provides them with desperately needed search volume.
The article also gives a refreshing perspective on Google. They have not created the world’s best tech company, but rather they have created the world’s best marketplace, which stemmed from having the best search technology back in the day.
Nowadays however, having the best search technology alone is not enough. I mean really, how many of us have actually gone to live.com?
Dave K :
Date: July 9, 2008 @ 4:04
While I don’t think that anyone would disagree that Microsoft needs to do something, and quickly, if they ever hope to compete with Google, I’m not convinced that buying Yahoo, either in part or otherwise, is the best deal out there. In a recent article by Aaron Wall posted he brings up a good point that if it is market share that they are after, they could buy other companies, a lot of other companies, for what it would take to buy up Yahoo.
For example, buy buying Expedia, Microsoft could take a huge portion of the internet travel traffic. Same thing for Monster.com.
While I’m sure that there are plenty of good reasons to buy Yahoo, it is at least an interesting exercise to think about what one would/could do with the $47 billion that they were thinking of using to get Yahoo.