I was just having a look at the BBC new headlines today morning, when the talk about Yahoo and Microsoft potentially pairing up caught my eye. Obviously this was a step taken to curb the rise of Google in the web search market, and shares of Yahoo has gone up by 14% as a result of this. What do you people think about it? Love to hear your opinions.

I seriously doubt Google would be in any way affected by this tie up. I mean come on, when we think of search, we think of Google. I have even see lots of people use the term 'Google it'.

And with the power of innovative thinking at its side (read Picassa and the likes), I seriously doubt they would be concerned.

Yes. I agree that Google has claimed to have got the Web Search problem solved. Even I hardly use the Yahoo or Alta Vista Search engines, and have made Google my homepage.

However, we know that Microsoft also has the ability to create some great products, so don't you think that they can improve on the yahoo searching capability from where it is today? After all, it is common knowledge that Microsoft has been trying to get into the web search market for sometime, and it will be better for them to start from where Yahoo stopped rather than start from scratch.

I also think that this will affect the Yahoo messenger, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Maps ( which is extensively used in Japan even more than Google Maps itself ).

Its interesting to know that Yahoo Maps are used extensively in Japan and preferred over Google Maps -- because I have always seen the reverse.

And though its a possiblity, its always tough breaking into a market predominated by someone. I mean why do we normally move to something else -- only when its better than the current one and has better functionality to offer. Try to come up with a feature of Google products you don't like and you would know what I am trying to say.. ;-)

But yes, if MS has any hope of getting into the search or web market, it would definately not be from scratch. Ah and not to forget that 'impossible is nothing'. So we just sit tight and wait for furthur developments.

I don't see it happening, at least not given the current status of each company. Microsoft is already pouring a ton of money into their search, and they are quickly improving their product. I can't see them gaining anything by integrating Yahoo's search. The benefit for Microsoft AFAICT would be in the other services Yahoo provides, which are very very widely used. Unfortunately for Microsoft, I don't think that buying out the services for the userbase is a good idea either.

1 decent search engine + another decent search engine != double traffic

Some people use both search engines. Some will be annoyed at a search engine that has way more features than they need, and leave. Either way, it's not going to be worth it for Microsoft to spend all sorts of money to try to merge an existing search engine into their mix.

If a competitor wants to have a chance at taking over Google, they're going to have to reinvent something -- Google did a number of things, differently than was traditional for companies to do (even though they didn't entirely come up with the ideas): trashing banner ads in favor of targetted text ads, using links instead of page popularity, ignoring META tags to prevent spam pages, and keeping the interface simple.

Take the most common pet peeves of a search engine and get rid of them. Merging a couple of search engines definitely ain't going to do that.

Here is a comparison on who will benefit if this merger, remote as it may seem, actually takes place.

And something a bit cheeky, but it has a point.

I wish they had broken Microsoft into baby Bills back in the 1990s. It's too big already.

It's big, but it has a huge product line, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's different from, say, the Standard Oil of the early 1900s.

What purpose would that serve?