Microsoft – Yahoo: The Non-Opinion

I spoke with a person fairly knowledgeable on the Internet marketing space. A little over two years ago, we sold his company to AOL.

I asked, “What do you think of the Yahoo!-Microsoft stalemate?”

His response to me, “Who cares? Yahoo is a poison pill for Microsoft; they’ll destroy that company. They should just operationally challenge their business.”

I thought for a second and then I kicked myself.

In dog-eat-dog world of internet marketing and product development, improving roi and making your product easy to use is king.

What my friend reminded me of is the same.

Essentially, why buy Yahoo when you can challenge their business operationally. Isn’t it much better sinking a $40B investment into the technology so that:

- there are no crappy integrations

- the purge of people doesn’t stagnate the product

Sure Microsoft can gain scale with this equation, but what about just offering better rates to all the advertisers on Yahoo! and then hiring away the choicest employees (as has been the trend).

If I’m Microsoft, I wrap this up fast, because it is probably not only damaging Yahoo!’s business, but mine as well as managers and teams sit in limbo.

Not strong sentiments here, but weighing in with a non-opinion.