Microsoft just hasn’t found a brand name yet for online services that could rival Google. Livesearch isn’t attractive and the very name limits expansion of its branded services, and Microsoft has always met resistance online. They should go back to the drawing board and forget about Yahoo, certainly at that price.
Yahoo for their part might do well to take the money and run, or else to stay alive it might as well get out of search altogether – they do have a few interesting fringe operations such as Yahoo Answers and their news service. Could they sell rights to the Yahoo search alone, and develop other valuable markets like blogging and hosting? I don’t know what blogging facilities they presently offer but it seems an obvious revenue stream and the market might be ready to treat Google as another unwieldy Microsoft in that case. Yahoo does have a strong brand but the search wars are over.
