Bronte Media

Here is my spurious thoughts on the game theory effect on Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo.

Yahoo finally strikes a deal with Google and kills Panama. Focuses on Right Media/Blue Lithium and making a go of it in remnant display. Enough to stave off Microsoft and keep Wall Street at bay for 1 year.

Time Warner, who actually wants to sell a large Internet unit, sells AOL to Microsoft. Any deal is a good deal once Microsoft is left without a bride and the spotlight on their meager Internet operations grows ever brighter. Or Microsoft acquires AOL *and* ASK. Barry is under fire from Malone and if he can flip ASK at a significant premium ($3-5bn) he can use that as a bargaining chip.

p.s. As an aside, I really hate it when idiots refer to Yahoo ‘outsourcing search’. There are two basic components to search: algorithmic search (building the index and organic results) and paid search (Panama, AdCenter and AdWords). They are very different. Yahoo doesn’t need to outsource both of those functions. They can just do the latter and pour more resources into the former and try and created a differentiated search experience like Ask.com.