14 DAY TRIAL // Saying it out forward, Jerry Yang is just not willing to let his company become a cog in Microsoft's empire, no matter how impressive Steve Balmer made it look like, speaking about integration whilst retaining brand and so on. Google immediately jumped to its fellow Internet giant's help and CEO Eric Schmidt sketched out a plan of the two forming a business alliance.
Provided that happens, would it be beneficial to everybody or will it only increase Google's search market ratio so much that Microsoft will have to shade its eyes in order to look at it? That would have to be it, Yahoo giving up its search and advertising, laying it at Google's feet, while it would focus mainly on mobile and following through with its music plan that has already started taking shape. Yahoo would also be left with its social networking, but we already know how well that worked for them, so that's not actually a plus.
Marketers and advertisers would be hit by such a joint venture the hardest, the move being as monopolistic as it could get. Google might, of course, hit a brick wall when going to the regulators, but for the sakes of the argument, that will be left out of the big picture.
Yahoo, in turn, would get to keep its brand and corporate autonomy and set off to a (relatively) fresh start, following a (relatively) new direction without having to drag its continuously less profitable advertising section.
Microsoft cannot afford to lose this deal it's trying to push. If it does, there won't be much to be done in following its Internet search expansion, with Google and Yahoo! amassing somewhere around 90 percent of that market. Fortunately, the Redmond-based company won't have to worry about another player in the race for Yahoo!, as Murdoch's News Corp will not pursue this. It's make or break time for Microsoft and it knows it.