Dan Says

Don’t think for one second that Microsoft cares about you. In fact, don’t think that any company cares about you. The reason Microsoft doesn’t like any form of a Yahoo-Google (from now on, referred to as YaGoogle) merger is because it will hurt them, and you. But mostly them.

Right now, Google’s major proposal is that Yahoo will have the option (but not obligation) to include Google Adwords in its searches, in addition to their current ads they have in their search results. Google claims, (with a whole website to back it up) that it will barely even be a noticeable change to the interface. That sounds great. The only problem is that unnoticeable changes are how big changes get started. Small integrations lead to large scale ones, and since they are so small at the beginning, you don’t even notice when all of Yahoo has been changed into Google (or YaGoogle). The reason why Yahoo would want to change over to Adwords is because they can make more money if they do it. The problem: it gives Google too much power. With Google advertising on Yahoo and Google, the two biggest websites on the internet (in terms of unique IP hits), they are going to have a strong hold on the online-advertising market. I’m not saying that this is going to necessarily have a negative impact, but it certainly can.

If Google does things correctly, it could maybe even have a positive impact on the way online-advertising is done. But if it isn’t done correctly, it can have severe consequences to many online business models.

Microsoft tries to make it sound like they care about you. Like the reason they don’t want this to go through is because it can be the start of something that could greatly hurt you. Don’t believe them. All they care about is that with YaGoogle monopolizing online-advertising, the only way they can survive in that market would be if it became YaGoogleSoft.com. And no one wants to type that into the address bar. “I YaGoogleSoft’d it” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.