Google is the #1 search provider, right? People trust their results more than all the others combined.

But by merging Yahoo and MSN search, you don't somehow double the search position. THEY'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS THEIR BEST ALGORITHM (which may be MSN). They still have to pick one search platform and go with it, and neither is even remotely as good as Google.

There may be some economies of scale at play here, but search ain't one of them. And that's still the ace card in the online deck.

It feels more like a trophy acquisition rather than a good business deal. Yahoo board and shareholder should take the money and run. The users who are using Yahoo for search will switch over to Google, so that is a plus for them as well.

When Microsoft makes a bid for Google, that is when things get ugly.

If you think the acquisition is about search, then you don't understand the deal.

Microsoft has announced plans to aggressively build out Internet Data Centers around the world. Estimates of what they plan to spend range from $3Bil-$10Bil. Subract the $10bil number out from $44 and you have an offering that is actually LESS than the current Market CAP.

Microsoft has also announced the need to hire something like 12k new staff for its network ventures. But MS HR can't bring in that many. Yahoo has 11,400 staff. At recruiting costs of $10k-$20k/hire, that's another $2Bil savings

Lastly its a capture of existing business customers - the target for Office Live, MS Dynamics and in the long run Microsoft's Cloud OS and Project Oslo

Search is not close to being the "ace card" in the online deck. This is about the next generation application development platform. And Microsoft has already bet on that being the web (witness its investment in Facebook to secure that as a Visual Studio/,NET development platform).

Why do millions of people a day go to www.google.com? Why do Google's contextual ads show up everywhere on the web? Because the Google search algorithm is unchallenged. And that drives everything else that Google is trying to do.

No that isn't the reason. I spent 9 mos running an applet that simultaneously submitted my queries to MSN, and Google.

About 35% of the time Google was faster or better than MSN
About 30% of the time MSN was clearly better than google
About 17% of the time they were equal
About 13% of the time neither one got me the answer I needed.

The reason people go to google is because

• They are used to the quirks of the search engine
• It has a better "network" of apps
• It has momentum.

What drives everything else Google is doing is the data-set they have, not the consumer query algorithm. Though CURRENTLY the latter drives probably most of their active innovation, Google well realizes the value is in the data-set itself.