trungngo - 11:12 pm on May 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

I think Y & MS are good companies in the old days. They were the original but the world is changing now and they are to slow to be competitive enough.

Remember that Y was the very first to enter the Paid Search Market. Bought out Overture when Overture was a dominance player. I remembered at that time Overture had 100,000 advertisers nearly double size Google. They controled 75% of the distributed partners in AOL, MSN, ... InfoSpace.

After 2 years Y allow Google to catched up. Totally unacceptable. The rebrand Overture to Y Marketing is very stupid, slowness in rolling out products 5 years in YPN beta (what the heck), and their in ability to keep innovating are good reasons to explain why Yahoo was to buried. (If Y keep talking about innovation, they should have done better.)

MS are not in many way difference. They wasted years and billions in development of search where they could have bought Google, Inktomi or Ask and develop AdCenter from ground up and wasted couple years more. (... not so wise). (They should have bought LookSmart, FindWhat ... Overture). (Totally mis-strategic move with a company that have plenty of capital. Why scramble now to buy Aquantive & Yahoo. (6B+42B) can be more s...p than that.)

If they are walking away now, they are very much close their own exit. (It is a must done deal for both of them.)

because even if these 2 companies combine won't be able to do much for Google. I think as temporary solutions it is ok but in the long run they will slide again.

The more potential players could be FaceBook and new start up. But then it will be millions light years from now.

It is tough to get a real competitor as Google's Size and the one could match its capability. I think it is very much the end of the search game.