aleksl - 1:12 am on Jul 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

physics, excellent observation on why Google makes more money then the others.

If I were investing in stock market heavily, I would be much less happier sitting in a volatile Yahoo! stock knowing they are loosing audience day by day; prior performance doesn't guarantee future results, especially these days of funny fiat money and even funnier paper "stocks".

Now, if you combine Yahoo, Live and MSN, Microsoft would own #1, 4 and 5 sites on the web. Further down the line they'll also get Yahoo! Japan at #10. Google will own #2 and 3 above, plus #9 Blogger.com and #11 Orkut, and a bunch of smaller sites in first 100. Maybe, maybe Microsoft will have a chance to compete.

Then I would go about scraping competing properties in favor of something I already have that is of value. Example: Yahoo! has excellent news and finance sections, MSN doesn't. Yahoo! has Hotjobs, MSN licenses content from Careerbuilder - scrap the licensing. You have excellent Yahoo! Shops and Sports, keep that, scrap MSN's parts.

Also, we'd need to position both sites, you can't be all to all people. I would do what New York Times did with About.com - make one brand top-notch, the other focus more as MFA on gossip, lower quality higher paying blah content, etc. Separate brandable properties into their own entities, so that it is not Yahoo! Hotjobs, or MSN Hotjobs (god, no!), but Hotjobs, an MSN brand (smaller print at the bottom).

Then, you need to focus on email. You have to do better than GMail. I personally don't like Hotmail, but fine, keep it in the MSN package "for AOL-type users" ;-) Yeah, and these deals with MSNBC and Fox News will fit this profile nicely, if you get the drift ;-)

Then you combine messengers and get a heads up on everyone there.

You get one strong video content site with Yahoo! Video.

Then, you clearly loose to Google on Blogging/Photo sharing front. Alas, searching Yahoo! for "blog" turns up Google's blogger.com in the first position - that is a NO-NO if the war is on.

etc.

By doing all this you see if you can scrap lots of resources you don't need or efforts you duplicate.

Then you change Search. You keep Yahoo! a portal, and keep Live a search. Nothing more, live is a search, THAT'S IT. Then you use Yahoo! Answers to train your search technology to answer as close to how people answer.

And whatever you do, you MUST rename a signle signon from "PASSPORT" into something else. For god's sake, Passport is associated with government, repression, border control, fees and taxes, whatever else but not a freedom of The Internet.

And THEN, you try to catch Google in over 100 other countries. Good luck with that.

Who knows, anyway.