Thread: Microsoft Finally Gets Yahoo!!!!

I'm all for free markets. There's nothing to stop an even better search engine from coming in and stealing the market share if Bing and Google don't continue to do the job later on down the road.

I suppose we'll see how it plays out. Kudos to Yahoo and Microsoft for taking the initiative. This deal may prove to be advantageous for them both. There are however, some interesting concerns about this partnership, and not just from Google. Observe:

The head of Google's search organization said the search deal announced Wednesday between Microsoft and Yahoo looked likely to be negative for competition and for consumers.

If Yahoo adopts Microsoft's Bing search engine in place of its own, that will reduce the search market from three major players to two, said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience. She said several groups at Google were still studying the proposed partnership, which is expected to close next year, but that it might reduce innovation.

"Everyone runs faster in a race where there are more people," Mayer said in a brief interview at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit in Palo Alto, California.

The likely effects of the deal are being debated in various corners of the industry. Some observers have suggested it may increase competition in the online advertising market, by creating a more viable competitor to Google.

When it comes to search, however, an industry analyst shared Mayer's concern.

It's "unfortunate" that there will now be one fewer major search player because it will weaken the competitive landscape, IDC analyst Al Hilwa said....

Microsoft-Yahoo Deal May Hurt Competition, Google Exec Says - PC World

The head of Google's search organization said the search deal announced Wednesday between Microsoft and Yahoo looked likely to be negative for competition and for consumers.

Google has so much influence in the Obama administration that it could probably block the search deal if it really wanted to.