The All-Star Game of the Web

Look at the players - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, News Corp's MySpace, Time Warner's AOL.
It all started Google's unstoppable growth in Web advertizing at the expense of others. Despite of numerous high quality efforts by Microsoft, Yahoo and others, there is no stopping the Google's march. So MS cannot see itself fighting Google on its own on the web, wants to buy Yahoo in the hope that 2 is better than 1. Yahoo then tried to run away from MS to court News Corp to maintain its independence. News Corp didn't see itself able to compete MS offer and tried to join MicroSoft in the deal. MS see no benefit bringing in News Corp when it can have Yahoo all for its own. Yahoo doesn't want to have anything to do with MS, tries to tag in with AOL and its even prepared to work with the player that is responsible for all its problems, i.e. Google to keep itself independent.

It'll be interesting to see how this game ends. To me, it doesn't look like any of the outcomes would even come close to challenging Google's domination on the web advertizing. You can't beat an innovating market leader at its own game. MS should have known it from its Zune experience. Xbox experience has got more to do with Sony's bigger plan to push BluRay.

MS, instead of buying Yahoo to play Google over the web, should take the game to a different battle field - In-Game advertizing for Xbox, Contextual Advertizing for Television with IPTV, In-car advertizing with Sync or other GPS and what not. If it doesn't make its moves on other fronts faster than it is doing now, it'll be too late.

Yahoo, there is no syngergy to go with MS or AOL or even NewsCorp. It'll be another business deal that would result in different degrees of failure. For Yahoo the game should be to be independent and work with everyone. Be the media company it always supposed to be. Delivering the content and services to its user community whether they are on the web or tivo or mobile or gps or facebook or myspace. Be the no.1 destination and monetize the traffic as best as you can.

Google is at the top of this game with majority of the marketers in its fold. Just sit tight and make no mistakes.