Marcia - 10:27 pm on Feb 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

It's worth recalling that not only does Yahoo have patents of their own, but when they acquired Overture, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and Alta Vista, didn't they also acquire rights to all of their patents as well? So what happens to all the patented technology if/when Microsoft acquires Yahoo?

There was a thread I recall here at WebmasterWorld a number of years ago (around 2000-2001) saying that it was reputed that Alta had just about everything related to search patented. It's probably an outdated concept at this point in time, years later, but there's still a wealth of technology for both search and advertising.

I can't see this being about search, but rather about traffic and market share. Yahoo is the grand-daddy of high traffic portals and always has been. Others have tried and come and gone by the wayside, but only Yahoo as a portal has continued to grow over the years. Recall the strategy publicly stated (by Semel) a few years back, about their model being to buy up properties and bring them in-house rather than outsourcing. What don't they have onsite?