Yahoo’s Pipe Dream, Diller’s Decision

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Stocks:  (IACA)(YHOO)(GOOG)(MSFT)

The editor at Fortune seem to think they have come up with a set of circumstances in which Yahoo! could catch Google in the search industry.

That’ll be the day.

Fortune wants its readers to believe that if Yahoo! and Microsoft team up in search, that with Yahoo!’ snew ad search technology, Panama, the combined entity might get close to Google in market share. Industry estimates are that Yahoo! has about half the number of advertisers that Google has.

The next part of the plan is that Ask.com, part of Barry Dillers IAC/Interactive put its search audience into the anit-Google pot. Ask has a deal with Google to run text ads that expires in 2007.

The process has several flaws. The first is that no one is sure that Yahoo! Panama is better that Google’s system. That won’t be known until it is in the market for some time. It is also not safe to assume that Google will keep its current platform without making its own major improvements.

Could Yahoo! pull MSN and Ask.com into a three-way partnership. Three ways is tough. Who runs it? What are the revenue cuts? Won’t Google come in and try to buy one of the partners out to prevent any alliance that might threaten it?

The editors at Fortune might want to find another topic.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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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