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Microsoft and Yahoo: two wrongs don't make a right

Microsoft's bid for Yahoo has made a lot of waves over the past couple of weeks. I'm not much of one to get caught up in speculative business deals, but this one has a great deal of relevance to our company since it involves the world of search.

A lot has been made about the potential anti-trust issues of a MSFT - YHOO merger, implying that the resulting company could control a monopolizing chunk of the search market. Wait a second ... what? Doesn't Google already control a larger percentage of the search market than Yahoo and Microsoft put together? Pretty crazy when a company (Google) is just so good at what they do that they capture their market organically and don't even provide an opportunity for people to claim anti-trust.

Anyway, my opinion here is two-fold:

  1. Microsoft and Yahoo getting together is not going to create a search monopoly, because:
  2. Both Microsoft and Yahoo are failing in search, and putting two broken things together won't make a fixed thing. As our resident SEO expert, Justin Boeckman, says, "they both do the same things wrong." And two wrongs don't make a right.

Now, believe me, I know that Microsoft is way smarter than me and I'm sure they have several billion reasons why this deal will be good. It's just not going to change the fact that Google's technology brings better results and brings them faster, and that's why a huge percentage of people use them.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Posted on Tue, February 19, 2008 by Tim Wall

8 comments (Add your own)

1. Thomas K wrote:
While I agree on what you're saying on the whole -- that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo won't beat Google at search -- I think the words you use to describe that scenario are off the mark. Saying MSFT and YHOO do things "wrong", and implying that Google does things "right", is laughable. It's like saying the color purple is wrong because it's less popular than red. That, and Google certainly isn't without flaws. We still have a long way to go before the general populace can interact with search engines in a natural way. In order to search and find what we really want to find, we still have to twist the search engines' arms with "AND" and "OR", quotes around phrases, and other esoteric tidbits that 99% of the people don't know how to use. Is that "right" to you? Throwing the parsing of "right" and "wrong" to the wind, I agree with you that this potential merger won't create a market leader in search. However, you can't honestly believe the merger is to gain significant ground in the world of search, do you? Far from it, in my opinion. Yahoo is the web's #2 property. They do a lot of things amazingly well, far beyond just the scope of "search". One more thing, there are a lot of people out there already on the "Google is a monopoly" hate-wagon, if you haven't seen it already.

Tue, February 19, 2008 @ 1:05 PM

2. Tyler wrote:
I worry for Yahoo if Microsoft gets control of them. I've always respected Yahoo for traveling in their own direction, yet have never made them my homepage or preferred search provider. Being an Apple guy, it just has to make me thing that Microsoft is starting to see a shift (though still small) in the market share they hold with personal computing with the new onslaught of arsenal Apple continually brings to the table. Is this possibly an entirely new market for them to compete in? If so, they'll have a few new things to learn being the underdog. They'd be competing against Google, the "Apple" of search. But seriously, should any of the search engines have to compete? couldn't they help each other out with indexing issues, etc? Maybe they should all take a look at providers like Mahalo.com! My couple pennies.

Tue, February 19, 2008 @ 1:36 PM

3. Jeppe wrote:
Live.com delivers relevant search results fast. Just no one is using it or optimizing for it. It rather be Microsoft than Yahoo!

Wed, February 20, 2008 @ 5:37 AM

4. Justin Boeckman wrote:
Thomas - I believe you read my quote incorrectly. I said they both do the same things wrong, I didn't say they both do search wrong. I also believe Tim's reference about failing at search was simply from a market share standpoint. People are going to search where they feel they get the best results for what they are looking for. I have to agree with you that I don't believe Google "has it right". I think in terms of SERPs all of the engines have a long way to go before any one engine has it "right". We are not naive enough to think the merger is not entirely based on search but I think if you look at how much MSN has spent in the last few years to compete in search it becomes more apparent that probably is their main objective. I know there are a lot of people out there that think Google is a monopoly and hate that aspect but are there more people that hate Google than Microsoft? Ty - I think you hit the nail on the head. Many people could see this as an act of desperation and lead to more people turning to Google as being a dependable and stable resource to find what they need. Jeppe - Live does a decent job but it is fairly simple to get good rankings, which I personally see as an algorithm flaw.

Wed, February 20, 2008 @ 9:26 AM

5. Tyler wrote:
Yay for me! I was right! (for once... not really) But here's my point. And here's where I'm going with this: I like that I haven't ever been torn down on the EF blog by other commenters (is that a word?) like I have been on other forums. There's not 50 guys watching every second waiting for a slip-up in wording or opinion. It's open, but nice. Thanks, EF, for providing a decent place with decent peeps. Maybe that's one of the differences between blogs and forums. In face, I never really hear people talk about the differences between the two. I bet there's people out there that couldn't define the difference (as I and you could). Might be a good topic sometime? They both have their place and strong points on the net within social networks.

Thu, February 28, 2008 @ 12:47 AM

6. Tyler wrote:
*in fact

Thu, February 28, 2008 @ 12:48 AM

7. Tim Wall wrote:
Thanks, Ty. I think the positive discussions around here are a tribute to our readers more than anything. Personally, I always enjoy a good, spirited debate, but I think there's always a way to keep things civil and edifying at the same time. Thanks for everyone for being a part of that.

Thu, February 28, 2008 @ 8:21 AM

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Sun, February 21, 2010 @ 5:51 AM

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