Microsoft to buy out Yahoo – Microhoo?

The last post was a quickie about javascript ratings scripts. After reading the rumors at eWeek that Microsoft are considering a buy out of Yahoo, I would have to rate MSFT management a big sub zero.

Microsoft is rapidly losing the search engine battle with Google and despite humungous viral and trojan marketing tactics, organic growth is not going to help them close the gap. Therefore, the only way to pay catch-up is by big check acquisitions. Enter stage left, Yahoo, number 2.0 in the search engine field.

Buying up Yahoo, numero dos in the industry, may sound like a great idea for Microsoft, but they should not go ahead with this crazy merger. The last time I looked at my stats for The Pisstakers (my main site), Yahoo provides at best one quarter the volume of Google search engine traffic. 50% of that 25% is mainly irrelevant and the 25 percentage points are dropping by the week. As my site is obviously a barometer for the whole internet, any merger, (to create Microhoo), would give MSFT an underwhelming, diminishing 30% share of the search engine market, with 10% of that producing crap results.

When you lay it out like that, paying $100bn for such mediocrity sounds like a typical MSFT investment! 100% chance it will probably happen.

If MSFT were wise, for once in their monopolistic lives, they will take the $100bn and invest $1bn in me and give the rest to charity. I will write a killer tech blog, draw a modest $50k weekly wage, and I won’t plaster Google Adsense left and right. Melinda and Bill can use their $99bn to save the world, and we will all say whatever MSFT want us to say, with a clear heart.

I got to writing this post after reading a spoof email from a guy called Andy who claimed to run MSN. He said he was closing MSN down and I needed to tell all my friends! I know, I nearly fell for it, till I realised it was probably from the guy Andy who runs Yahoo.

Stumble It!