Isn’t Microsoft Misjudging the Situation?

We have the announcement, made official today, that the search functions of Yahoo will be soon relegated to the Bing search engine.

There is more to it than that, of course, but the important part, for most people, will be the fact that the Yahoo search mechanism is going to be put out to pasture. The announcement from the two entities is clear on that, it will not be a melding, it will be a full replacement.

Now, I wonder how well this has been thought out, on both sides of the proposed solution. Why do I ask that? Simply because the answers don’t add up.

When Bing first made a splash, it was clear that Microsoft was serious about search. All well and good, except that it was quickly seen that the Yahoo users are a loyal bunch, and logic makes one ask what they were loyal to. I certainly don’t believe it was the ads, because when a search is performed, very little of the time is spent thinking about what ads will pop up, along side of the relevant results. Clearly the Yahoo loyal are loyal to both the name and the search engine.

About the time of the Bing announcement, I took a few tries at Bing, and then after a period, I took a shot at a search site that was set up to feed queries from the user to all three engines, Yahoo, Google, and Bing.  The results were chosen blindly, and after choosing, it was revealed where the choice came from. In my case, the majority of searches that I subjectively judged best were from Yahoo, with fewer than half from Google, and absolutely none from Bing.

Now, why would the loyal 20% stay loyal to a name where the name is only a badge upon a search engine, no longer having anything to do with the core company established years ago. For people like me, who have proven, with a significant number of searches, done in a blind fashion, that Bing offers

nothing, and with a strong anti-Microsoft bias, what makes the people at Yahoo or Microsoft think that searches will continue to be inputted to the face that says Yahoo? (By the way, my strong anti-Microsoft bias is here only; I simply believe that the time, money, and effort wasted on the idiocy of advertising, and search, could be much better spent on work upon the company’s core products.)

So what happens when the figures slant to 85-10 in favor of Google? Surely some people will stay with the name Yahoo, because they are oblivious to many things. But that number will probably be nowhere near the full 20% that Yahoo now commands. (I’d put it under 5%) Will Microsoft finally realize it is throwing money down the toilet? Is the extra 5% worth it? Do they think that the world perceives Google as an entity that is going to become a problem at some figure above its current market share?

Bing disguised as Yahoo will not be the powerhouse that Microsoft seems to think. Clearly it will not go away entirely, but for each percent of search, and ad revenue, how many millions will Microsoft be paying? At some point, both the share holders, and the bean counters, will tell Mr. Ballmer that his wild ideas of becoming the face of search are as off the mark as his ideas that people actually like him doing the demented dancing monkey thing.

– As I get this ready to post, I can’t help but wonder if Carl Icahn thinks, beyond the money to be made by Yahoo in the short run, if this is a good idea. –

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