
Google/Yahoo Search Partnership Announcement At 1:30 This Afternoon - ideas101
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/googleyahoo-announcement-at-130-this-afternoon/
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mdasen
1:33 this afternoon, the Justice Department announces sweeping anti-trust
against Google.

I love Google. They're a model company, but in a 1.5 player market (Google
being one player, Yahoo being .3 of a player and Microsoft being .2 of a
player), you just can't allow the top two to collude together. Unless the
partnership is merely giving Yahoo a fork of PageRank, it's going to be crappy
- and it isn't that.

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eugenejen
My opinion is "take it easy". If you are a real capitalist and believe power
of market force, the current success of Google may just be its biggest hurdle
in future. As long as political power is not involved to hold the barrier for
innovations, no one will be the only king forever.

Also you misunderstand Anti-trust law. The U.S. system allows you to be a
monopoly in a market due to you create efficiency in that area. But as long as
you try to leverage that influence on new market with unfair competition, you
open the gate to hell for yourself.

I thought in 2000 that MS is so unbeatable. But I have no respect for them
just 5 years later. It can happen to Google in next 10 years, too.

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tx
I don't want to comment on the story because I really don't care for ads, but
I keep wondering why do people think that the result of Microsoft+Yahoo merger
would be stronger than two separate companies?

What stops Microsoft from successfully competing with Google starting right
now? They freaking _OWN_ 67% of the browser market and 94% of OS market, so
they own the address bar and default search setting in nearly every PC sold!
How much more leverage do you need???

And yet it's not enough to fight Google off - people keep changing the default
search and default homepage setting to <http://google.com> in every brand-new
installation of IE. Why would you want to help that company? And how was Yahoo
supposed to help them?

This isn't the auto-industry where mergers help you out with sharing
manufacturing plans, part bins, "platforms" and dealer networks. This kind of
shit is FREE on the Internet: all you have to do is to build a superior
product, it takes seconds for customers to switch.

Message to Microsoft: simply start to innovate again with your engineering,
just like you used to against IBM, Lotus and Netscape, forget all that shady
marketing BS and half-assed mergers with losers.

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cstejerean
trying to leverage their control of one market to unfairly gain an advantage
in another is what got MS in trouble last time.

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jonknee
What's going to be left to do at Yahoo? Develop Yahoo! Mail? Or is that going
to be Gmail as well.

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bluelu
Yahoo is dead. This will only make google's monopoly bigger. Yahoo should have
teamed up with Microsoft, and they would have a chance. But instead they waste
time on introducing a poison pill (see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=214893>) which damages the company when a
change of control happens (not only when Microsoft would buy yahoo, but also
if the board changes!!!), thus forcing the stockholders not to vote for a new
board of directors!

~~~
fallentimes
Yahoo is not dead. Yahoo Sports gets more hits than ESPN. They have plenty of
money making services to offer besides search and are still one of the most
visited sites in the world. The days of 80 P/E ratios are over, but that
doesn't mean they are dead. Yahoo will be fine.

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jsjenkins168
I am shocked at the market cap loss YHOO is experiencing right now due to this
story.. I've seen breaking news drive stock price fluctuations but this is
pretty extreme.

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mynameishere
It's mainly a re-adjustment based upon the diminished chances of a microsoft
buyout. I own MSFT stock (bought some speculatively, expected the deal to fall
through, as it did), and at this point Yahoo seems, in fact, quite dead. (I
don't mean its properties, but its corporate independence.) I suspect that
when it becomes _clear_ that a google deal will happen, yahoo will drop
another 30-40 percent. It's really that bad.

What's keeping it up is the continued possibility of a stockholder revolt,
which is precisely what needs to happen. (Supposedly, someone was organizing
it, but I haven't followed along.) The stockholders need to oust the whole
board, and replace it will a cleanup crew, who'll sell out to microsoft.

A google/yahoo buyout won't happen. The gov't (hopefully) wouldn't allow it.

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bluelu
This won't happen, as the "Change in Control Employee Severance Plans" is
explicitely activated as soon as a change of control happens (election of new
board).

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dcurtis
Isn't it a bit presumptuous of Michael Arrington to suggest that this story is
directly causing the stock price to fluctuate? I mean, seriously, it's
TechCrunch.

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jonknee
I love the humility:

> Yahoo Stock is down sharply based on this story and a follow up by Reuters.

It was the "follow up" by one of the most widely read and respected news
sources. Once it hit Reuters and WSJ it was up on Drudge, CNN, etc. That
caused the stock to dive, not a mention on TC inbetween Twitter rants.

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gscott
This doesn't make any sense. Yahoo! bought Overture and runs it's own ad
network. This is a lot like Ford giving there employees GM cars to drive.

~~~
pchristensen
More like Lada giving its employees Toyotas to drive.

