So the Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is still considering buying Yahoo's search business, this time by finding another partner, like News Corp., which would buy the rest of Yahoo. Here's a link to InternetNews for those of you who don't have a WSJ subscription.
I know Rupert Murdoch is supposed to be a smart guy, but he may just be dumb and ambitious enough to take such a deal. He's still thinking like a tabloid publisher, thinking he can create his own web of sites and keep people bouncing around within them like a silver ball in a pinball machine until they land in an ad hole. No need to visit other sites! We've got the best of the Web right here!
And why didn't he make WSJ free, as he said he would? WSJ is a great pub, but it can never have an exclusive for more than a few hours. Just go to, oh, InternetNews, perhaps.
I know Steve Ballmer, and he's the kind of guy who doesn't give up easily. He's smart and aggressive, and one of the best dealmakers in the world. And he isn't nearly as mean as people make him out to be. I'm sure he's keeping his options open, and probably talking to certain dissident shareholders.
The problem with the whole deal is that it doesn't address the fundamental problem -- making money off advertising. Microsoft makes less money off internet advertising than I do from blogging. And I don't make anything from blogging.
Yahoo isn't much better. Why do you think it wants to do the AdSense deal with Google?
All Microsoft gets is subscribers. It still has to figure out how to make money from them. That means more relevancy and ease of use, areas where it has about as much talent as Lou Costello trying to play Hamlet.