Archit Tantia

Is the $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! Inc. by Microsoft Corp good or bad for us and Google? I say it just won’t matter. For the users it would be the same old less-relevant search results by both the “Google fed-up” companies. And for Google – Sergey and Larry are going to have no problems sleeping.

Google’s search market share was 58.4 percent in December, while Yahoo and Microsoft combined for almost 33 percent of the market. Yahoo holds 22.9 percent and Microsoft 9.8 percent. So even if the deal is successful Microsoft still wouldn’t be able to capture more market share than Google.

Google will get a 12 month time to boost its services and customer base if the companies merge. Microhoo! (Microsoft – Yahoo) will be in a big mess coordinating with each other’s headquarters loosing customers due to poor synchronization. Microsoft doesn’t have the experience to fix and combine Yahoo.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer himself told analysts in July 2006 that buying Yahoo wouldn’t help Microsoft improve its search business, because only Google has a better quality product than Microsoft but seems he isn’t a word keeper.

Microsoft is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation; Yahoo! is a registered trademark of Yahoo, Inc.; Google is a registered trademark of Google, Inc. Microhoo logo courtesy joemanna.com