Tardy tie-up too late to the party

29-07-2009

by Ralph Averbuch

A Yahoo/Microsoft search tie-up may make sense but it's a little late to the party.

You can't read the announcement from Microsoft/Yahoo of a search tie-up without a mixture of both hope and pessimism. For any search engine optimisers out there, the prospect of being able to offer a viable alternative to Google's Adsense search advertising programme has to be pretty key. The announcement argues that the combined forces of Yahoo and Microsoft, utilising the newly launched Bing search engine, will give a reach of about 30 percent of the total online search market. That is erring on the side of optimism. By a number of measures the balance of power in this part of the world is, if anything, much more one-sided, with some suggesting nine out of every 10 searches are courtesy of Google. It's a tough nut to crack and a wonderful irony that we are now looking to perhaps one of the most monopolistic and anti-competitive companies of recent history to attempt to redress the massive competitive imbalance in search. Yet that's exactly where Microsoft finds itself. It's deeply unhealthy for competition that Google dominates this market. Yet it has achieved this pre-eminence by doing nothing more than delivering exactly what people needed, wanted and delivered more than anyone could ever have anticipated. Fact is, with Google enjoying such user popularity you cannot help but feel that this is too little much too late in the game...

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