So the wires are aflame with the news that Microsoft and Yahoo have “joined forces” in a 10-year search and advertising deal.

Search and destroy
Let’s be clear on this one: Microsoft isn’t partnering with Yahoo. It’s devouring it. It’s gobbling it up whole like a party snack before moving onto its next conquest. The argument, of course, is that not having to fund search will save Yahoo “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Well done. If Nike halted the production of shoes it would save itself hundreds of millions of dollars too. The only drawback being they’d have bugger-all to sell. All of which begs the question: is Yahoo nothing more than a brand?

Yahoo is a husk
Is it an ironic coincidence that “the term “Yahoo” has become synonymous with “cretin,” “dinosaur,” and/or “Neanderthal?”
It seems their misappropriation of Swift’s literary savages has finally come to define them. They’re out of touch; a member of a collective of prehistoric companies that include the likes of AOL, whose search has stalled but just about manages to scrape a revenue through the hillbillies, the half-dead and the Luddites who still use dial-up.

Wrong deal, wrong time
Yahoo chief Carol Bartz said: “This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of internet innovation and development.”

Note the “boatloads of value,” in pointed contradiction to the “boatloads of money” Bartz previously promised to shareholders. Seems that promise was a boatload of (*cough*) bravado. Yahoo’s stock mirrors this disappointment, with share price taking a 7% drop immediately after the announcement. The deal is certainly a far cry from the $44.6bn bid Microsoft made for Yahoo in February 2008.

Microsoft should be pretty pleased
Bing was always a way for Microsoft to acquire Yahoo. But it wasn’t a cheap ploy; they’ve come up with a decent search engine that even breaks some new ground.  It embraces real-time search by incorporating Twitter results and it bundles in other nice touches like video previews straight from the results page. They’ve even chosen the name carefully, making sure it can be used as a verb – “I binged it.” It does, in fact, make Google look a little bit lazy – and out of touch. As well as Wave and Chrome, which mean nothing yet to the consumer, Google’s most recent activity includes, err, adding the pointless ability for users to personalise their search results and … oh yeah, taking Gmail out of beta after five years. Let’s face it – that’s a bit lame, Google. Next you’ll be taking lessons off Ask Jeeves.

Yahoo! is dead. Long live Microsoft.