Microsoft (MSFT) Becomes The Victim, Opens “Save The Whales” Fund

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Now that Microsoft (MSFT) can’t have Yahoo! (YHOO), it does not want anyone else to have the portal. Yahoo! has gone to search rival Google (GOOG) to sell some of its advertising inventory. Google can get a better price for it and that could add $500 million per year to Yahoo!’s bottom line over time.

The Microsoft argument is simple, and convincing. According to Reuters, the software company said in an e-mail that the Google-Yahoo agreement would "limit choices for advertisers and publishers" and "destroy a competitive alternative."

The comment has the benefit of being true. Google and Yahoo! are the No. 1 and No. 2 search engines in the US, and together control about 85% of the market. Yahoo! has been clever, saying that it will only offer some of its inventory to Google. That give the deal a illusion of being "non exclusive". But, the relationship is likely to strengthen over time. Yahoo! can save several hundred million dollars by killing R&D on its own search technology.

The people who run the "Save The Whales" non-profit are starting up a fund for Microsoft.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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