Microsoft to Kill Google? No.

Hmm, not too sure about MSN merging with AOL, or anyone else for that matter. Still, the reasoning presented below does offer a compelling argument.

So the big story these days is that Google and Microsoft are going to war and that either could win. This is a big story because it’s a great story: two undefeated heavyweights preparing to bash each other’s brains out. Alas, it’s also fiction.

Despite ten years of effort, vast technological and financial resources, and a legendary intensity, Microsoft is running a distant third in the web wars (behind Google and Yahoo!)–and it continues to fall farther behind. Importantly, this is almost the same competitive position Microsoft occupied in 1995, when Yahoo! was run out of a dorm room and Google didn’t exist. Microsoft was trying desperately to win the Internet war then, and it has tried desperately every year since. And despite all its assets, the best it has been able to do is run a distant third. [Read the rest]