steve40 - 6:44 pm on May 3, 2006 (gmt 0)

BIG BIG News

I suspect MSN will not give a rats which search they end up using this is all about the % share of online community , This is surely more about opportunities for placing adds infront of visitors and will turn into old fashioned rating war as per TV share long term ( the higher market penetration the better the add dollars earnt ) .
More interesting than which will be the search results is who will provide the advertising , anybody know of Yahoo market penatration in fareastern markets

If MSN buy Yahoo they are ramping up even more than many of us thought and have been very canny

1 Forced Google to overpay for AOL share
2 New IE7 good enough that may stop Firefox continueing to gain market share AKA Google default search and released in "beta" early and significant share gained very quickly
3 New VISTA OS and Apps coming out late 2006 - early 2007 much more integrated to Internet suprise suprise Microsoft view of the internet
4 Bid on Yahoo after much of Google cash committed to AOL and other projects so keeping the bidding war to a minimum

This will be a war that will be decided with good old fashioned cash and how far the city will go for the 2 giants
Google current internet business model works and well proven with high profits also ( still young and hungry ) plus a couple of important aces in the hole very strong working relationship with SUN and The public perception is Google - Search
Microsoft very cash rich with desktop OS and APPS dominating the user desktops and just now entering the internet full force ( older established but still seems hungry )

steve