Microsoft Talking to Yahoo – What’s the Point?

Today’s Sunday Times is reporting that Microsoft is once again talking to Yahoo.

Not for an outright buyout but just to “support” a new management team when Mr Yang (Chief Yahoo)  departs finally.

Basically Steve Ballmer just wants to get his hands directly / indirectly on Yahoo’s search division and doesn’t care a jot about the rest of Yahoo. At the rate at which both MS and Yahoo are falling behind Google in the pay per click race, is buying Yahoo even going to help Microsoft’s fortunes?

I doubt it. Google doesn’t have Market Share, it has “Mind Share” & MS can’t buy that in Search – unfortunately for them.

Bear in mind of course that “Hoover” was the generic term for vacuum cleaner for decades on this side of the Atlantic. Then Mr Dyson came along with a funky new product that looked great, worked well and thousands of perfectly functioning Hoovers were replaced with the new Dyson which looked cooler and sucked up dirt just like the Hoover did.

Maybe the longer-term answer for Microsoft & Yahoo is to hold onto their wallets for now, encourage startups in the search & technology space (as they’re doing with BizSpark & Y’s recent Search announcement) and simply invest in new startup’s like for eg YouTube who are clearly going places, even if their business model hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet – just like Google’s early years.