$44.6 billion for a poor search engine? Not exactly...

Microsoft's sudden bid for a hostile takeover of Yahoo for a proposed $44.6 billion, way more than the stock is worth, may seem like an odd move. Microsoft already has a search engine, MSN, and they have all the features Yahoo does. They say they want to create more competition to help combat Google's constant growth and dominance in web search and features. Referring to Google (though it fits Microsoft themselves better oddly enough) Microsoft officials said,

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative."

This is where the bull is getting too deep for me. Since when did Microsoft offer 1) more competition or 2) credibility? MSN and Yahoo are about as effective as search engines as looking through paid ads. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail are slow and ad riddled. Yahoo has been falling off for a long time, they've had layoffs and are failing as a company, it's only a matter of time before they're no longer a major player. So it looks like this merger is about as smart as HP-Compaq.

Well, here's the kicker...

Google does a lot of things. One thing they do that Microsoft wants to slow down at least is their support of open source and Linux. If you control a larger portion of search traffic and more ad revenue you can help limit the exposure to this information. Anything Microsoft can do to hurt Google now helps them. Google is now preparing to buy up some airwaves now, that would allow them to use Linux more (read: Android) and will open more people up to open source and media delivery systems. That would put the major hurt on Microsoft and all their work in multimedia systems.

So I firmly believe Microsoft has no interest in Yahoo for itself, but for a way to consolidate more traffic to a single source and put more pressure on Google. They've been making a lot of attacks on Google this past year, claiming they are involved in privacy violations and other unsubstantiated illegal activities. Now let's just wait and see where this goes.