- The deal will go through
- It’s the best competitive response possible to Google dominance
- It doesn’t solve the central issue of Search – how do you dislodge the verb “to google?”
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It begs the question of how much media creation the combined new entity brings to the party
- Google is platform and denies it is a media company
- YHOO has tried to be a media company (and too many other things)
- MSFT has tried to be a media company and now is trying to be a portal/search/platform company
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Does this set the stage for two different standards for web based applications and services?
- Will the world further divide into Google People and Yasoft People?
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Who gets hurt?
- Consolidation on this scale hurts traditional media trying to build scale. News Corp. comes right to mind
I’ll think some more, but right off the top, I’d say this is going to happen and 2008 will become a very very weird year. 2007 was the year of ad networks – Google/Doubleclick, Microsoft/Atlas. This is the year the superpowers line up. Will there be a cold war?
Silicon Alley Insider — Blodget et al — are liveblogging the Microsoft call.
reminds me my reaction to the google myspace hookup. excellent competitive response – grayblobbing up to stave off comp, getting it in-house while figuring out where the money’ll come from. …perhaps the money comes from just not having someone take it out of your pocket. like that odd game of middle class oneupmanship, adding stuff to the crib that may not particularly add value, except in competitive sense. analogy breaks, though, where I do think that there is a dollar lurking somewhere in grayblobbed consumer/audience franchises.