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Microsoft, Yahoo deal: Dumb and Dumber
By Jim DalrympleJuly 30, 2009, 9:59 am PT
Microsoft and Yahoo inked a deal on Wednesday that will see the two companies team-up to take on search giant, Google. I see this as a clear win for Google.
Google must be so pleased with this deal. Think about it — Microsoft and Yahoo will put all of its energy into integrating systems, search, ads, personnel and Google will lap up the percentages of search that they leave behind in the confusion.
By the time Microhoo finally gets its act together it will be too late to battle Google. In fact, it’s pretty easy to argue that the battle has been finished for years.
The basic problem with Microhoo is that they don’t know how to compete with Google. That’s not a big surprise, Microsoft doesn’t know how to compete with Apple either, and it shows in its products.
Take a look at Yahoo’s homepage compared to Google’s. Terrible. Google is focused on delivering the best search that it can to its customers in a very easy interface. Yahoo is none of that.
Microhoo is none of that and a few steps down for the utter confusion it’ll bring.
Joe Wilcox in a Betanews story likens Microhoo to “Dumb and Dumber” and calls the deal “dumberer” for both companies. He’s right.
According to Wilcox, Google’s market share was 65 percent in June, followed by Yahoo at 19.6 percent and Microsoft at 8.4 percent. Even combined, it doesn’t give Microhoo enough to be within striking range of Google.
Despite its intentions, Microhoo is a clear win for Google.
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Discussion
6 comments so far
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Maybe it should be called Micro who?
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The market share seems slanted to Google in browser-based numbers. But I think given time, The Who (I’m sorry… that’s an insult to some great musicians) will gain more over time because of what I refer to as “terminal users.” By Terminal, I mean, like, dumb terminals. People who surf the net without realizing what they are doing. These are folks who when they go to search for something type it intentionally into the URL bar. Or instead of going to website.com they will type the website into their search bar, look at the results, and click on the first one. I’m seeing more of these types of users.
These are the types of users who will increase Microhoo’s numbers when it comes to browser and search engine statistics. They don’t know they have a choice of what search engine they are using when they use IE’s search bar, much less how to change it if they wanted to. They won’t bother to switch to a better browser because they don’t know how to. Instead, they will click on the first window that pops up and claims their computer is infected and to click on the oh-how-so-convenient button to go ahead and take care of it.
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I agree completely that this will most likely be a disaster for both companies. As one of the other commentors pointed out, unless someone is just using IE’s default search box, they’re most likely going to use Google because neither Yahoo or Microsoft (or anyone else) is really offering anything better than what Google has and it’s hard to envision they ever will. They make searching the web trivially easy and give back great results.
On top of that, if you’re a pay-per-click customer, there’s really very little incentive to bother with Yahoo and especially not MS. With the vast majority of eye balls on Google, I definitely don’t waste my limited time managing campaigns on any other platform. So this means Google continues to win where it really matters: Where people pay for the service.
I tend to liken Google’s current position to that of Microsoft in the OS world about 15 years ago: They’ve reached the critical mass of users and have become the defacto standard. It will be incredibly difficult for anyone to push them out of that spot.
By the way, I do have to take a little bit of issue with this comment:
“Microsoft doesn’t know how to compete with Apple either…”
That might be true in the hardware market (mobile phones and MP3 players), but I’d say that owning 90%+ of the OS market, a similar share of the Office Suite market, and a large and growing portion of the server market indicates that MS definitely knows how to compete in the software realm.
We might not like their monopolistic practices to do it, but they definitely know how to compete.
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I really don’t give a rat’s turd what MS does with Yahoo – as long as MS or Yahoo don’t mess with Flickr. If they start farting around with it, Imma go down there and start whoopin-sum-ass!
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@Matt
“…but they definitely know how to compete.”
Only when they can cheat in an anti-competitive manner.
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As they say on MDN, “May Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes.”
Post a comment
Microsoft, Yahoo deal: Dumb and Dumber
By Jim DalrympleJuly 30, 2009, 9:59 am PT
Microsoft and Yahoo inked a deal on Wednesday that will see the two companies team-up to take on search giant, Google. I see this as a clear win for Google.
Google must be so pleased with this deal. Think about it — Microsoft and Yahoo will put all of its energy into integrating systems, search, ads, personnel and Google will lap up the percentages of search that they leave behind in the confusion.
By the time Microhoo finally gets its act together it will be too late to battle Google. In fact, it’s pretty easy to argue that the battle has been finished for years.
The basic problem with Microhoo is that they don’t know how to compete with Google. That’s not a big surprise, Microsoft doesn’t know how to compete with Apple either, and it shows in its products.
Take a look at Yahoo’s homepage compared to Google’s. Terrible. Google is focused on delivering the best search that it can to its customers in a very easy interface. Yahoo is none of that.
Microhoo is none of that and a few steps down for the utter confusion it’ll bring.
Joe Wilcox in a Betanews story likens Microhoo to “Dumb and Dumber” and calls the deal “dumberer” for both companies. He’s right.
According to Wilcox, Google’s market share was 65 percent in June, followed by Yahoo at 19.6 percent and Microsoft at 8.4 percent. Even combined, it doesn’t give Microhoo enough to be within striking range of Google.
Despite its intentions, Microhoo is a clear win for Google.
Email This Post
⋅ Print This Post
⋅ Post a comment
Discussion 6 comments so far
-
Maybe it should be called Micro who?
-
The market share seems slanted to Google in browser-based numbers. But I think given time, The Who (I’m sorry… that’s an insult to some great musicians) will gain more over time because of what I refer to as “terminal users.” By Terminal, I mean, like, dumb terminals. People who surf the net without realizing what they are doing. These are folks who when they go to search for something type it intentionally into the URL bar. Or instead of going to website.com they will type the website into their search bar, look at the results, and click on the first one. I’m seeing more of these types of users.
These are the types of users who will increase Microhoo’s numbers when it comes to browser and search engine statistics. They don’t know they have a choice of what search engine they are using when they use IE’s search bar, much less how to change it if they wanted to. They won’t bother to switch to a better browser because they don’t know how to. Instead, they will click on the first window that pops up and claims their computer is infected and to click on the oh-how-so-convenient button to go ahead and take care of it.
-
I agree completely that this will most likely be a disaster for both companies. As one of the other commentors pointed out, unless someone is just using IE’s default search box, they’re most likely going to use Google because neither Yahoo or Microsoft (or anyone else) is really offering anything better than what Google has and it’s hard to envision they ever will. They make searching the web trivially easy and give back great results.
On top of that, if you’re a pay-per-click customer, there’s really very little incentive to bother with Yahoo and especially not MS. With the vast majority of eye balls on Google, I definitely don’t waste my limited time managing campaigns on any other platform. So this means Google continues to win where it really matters: Where people pay for the service.
I tend to liken Google’s current position to that of Microsoft in the OS world about 15 years ago: They’ve reached the critical mass of users and have become the defacto standard. It will be incredibly difficult for anyone to push them out of that spot.
By the way, I do have to take a little bit of issue with this comment:
“Microsoft doesn’t know how to compete with Apple either…”
That might be true in the hardware market (mobile phones and MP3 players), but I’d say that owning 90%+ of the OS market, a similar share of the Office Suite market, and a large and growing portion of the server market indicates that MS definitely knows how to compete in the software realm.
We might not like their monopolistic practices to do it, but they definitely know how to compete.
-
I really don’t give a rat’s turd what MS does with Yahoo – as long as MS or Yahoo don’t mess with Flickr. If they start farting around with it, Imma go down there and start whoopin-sum-ass!
-
@Matt
“…but they definitely know how to compete.”Only when they can cheat in an anti-competitive manner.
-
As they say on MDN, “May Ballmer remain Microsoft’s CEO for as long as it takes.”
Post a comment