Watching the Tail Wag the Dog

I sometimes wonder how these things get started. As far as I know the idea that Microsoft might buy Yahoo was first proposed by a stock analyst around a year and a half ago. The reasoning was that Yahoo would bring search technology to MSN that would help it compete with Google, and in return Yahoo would get funding to make their search even better, to (wait for it....) compete with Google. Yeah I know, it doesn't make sense to me either.

Today Microsoft announced an unsolicited bid for Yahoo, to the tune of 44.6 billion (stock and cash). The question is, what do they think they're going to get for all that money, flickr? Adding Yahoo's search technology (which is clearly better than MSN's Live Search) is not going to make Microsoft a threat to Google's search dominance.