Microo?

So Microsoft has tendered a bid to buy Yahoo! for $44.6bn.

I under­stand that Microsoft has to do some­thing to build on its web strategy/​presence. No-​​one uses Live Search, Live Spaces, or any of the rest. (OK. About one percent of people do). To build up any future trade for advert­ising, web services or devel­op­ment plat­forms, they have to increase market share.

I under­stand that Yahoo! has to do some­thing. Their share of the search market is pitiful compared to the almighty Google. Their share of the search mar­keting budget is about 20% compared to Google’s 70%. And they’d just been forced to lay off a load of staff.

So if they combine forces, they end up with a market competitor?

I don’t think so.

Microsoft’s problem and Yahoo!‘s has been that they have not been able to identify what they do well. Microsoft used to do oper­ating systems and business pro­ductivity software. They were quite good at that. YMMV.

Yahoo! used to have this great dir­ectory of editor-​​approved, quality websites. Then they diver­si­fied. They tried to make yahoo.com all things to all wo/​men. That failed dis­astrously because there’s no such thing. They brought on some cool people and acquired a load of cool sites like del.icio.us, flickr and upcoming. But still it didn’t work for them because advert­isers don’t buy cool; they buy results. Yahoo! announced 1400 job losses just last week.

Why didn’t it work and why isn’t MS able to make any inroads on the web?

Because neither of them have a core value pro­pos­i­tion when it comes to the web. You couldn’t sum up what either of them do on the web in one sentence. If a business can’t do that, then they are in trouble, normally.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bits within both com­panies’ web presence that have con­sid­er­able value. Flickr is a cool photo site. Microsoft’s technet is actually very good, IMHO. Live Spaces is arguably a much better platform than Blogger or Vox.

However, for end-​​users, if you want good search, go to Google. For busi­nesses, if you want SEM, go to Google. What exactly would you will­ingly go to a Yahoo or MS website for?

Microo! doesn’t appear to me to provide a com­pel­ling altern­ative to any of that.

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