openmind - 10:26 am on Jul 7, 2005 (gmt 0)

"but yahoo has more than enough money and ability to pull off a contextual ad program."

Do you really think that money will enable Yahoo to 'pull off a contextual ad program'? They need much more than just money to succeed in this field. I might be biased but every time I try to find a specific piece of information through Yahoo I get frustrated because the search results are often irrelevant. I think solid and relevant search results are the foundation for any contextual ad program. As I see it Yahoo has been diversifying into different areas and web search is not their top priority. That's why Google has been able emerge and grow in the first place. MSN has also been trying to improve their search engine but I think it's still much weaker than Google's. If they cannot deliver better search results than Google they will be having a hard time to compete with Adsense.