Microsoft and Yahoo in secret talks?

It is only a matter of time before Microsoft takes over Yahoo, despite Yahoo's attempts to raise the price of the offer, so where does that leave search? In the zeal to get money from all of this Internet advertising, I have a prediction:

Microsoft buys out Yahoo, only to discover that they do not gain that much, and actually lose market share in the long run.

Why? Because it is all about helping people find stuff on the Internet, which has nothing to do with making money. After all, Yahoo bought out Overture (who started the PPC game), but they did not "monetize" the SERP enough to make it a winner (sorry, Terry Semel, but you lost and were kicked out as a result).

How have I reached this conclusion? TV advertisers are running scared because this new medium (the Internet) does not translate into the old marketing dogma of showing ads between content in a linear fashion. It is too easy to ignore the ads and look for the "back button" or just close the browser and start over.

And, ask.com is on the biggest losing streak of all time, despite their dropping "Jeeves" and trying to generate a "viral" marketing scheme to oust the leader, but they do nothing to embrace the webmasters around the globe who want their sites to be found (sorry, Barry Diller, but I warned you).

So, once Micro-Hoo has been around for a few years and does not perform as well as Ballmer had hoped, then what?

So, Bill Gates slips to #3?

News reports that Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world (according to Forbes) and has actually slipped to be number 3 are no surprise to me...

With a lunatic like Ballmer running the show now, I should be surprised?

Sorry Gates, but you are going to slip away even more... Remember Howard Hughes? He is just a figure from the ancient, dark past, and was once the richest man in the world. The dim past is where you are headed as Ballmer squanders your money on silly attempts to gain control of the Internet with multi-billion dollar purchases like the Yahoo deal.

40 billion dollars to spend not long after you spent 6 billion dollars and actually slid in your share of the search market. I have seen the end results of this 6 billion dollar deal, and it is not pretty, because it is all about getting people to click on your paid links, rather than helping them find something that they really want. When was the last time that you actually solved a problem for your end users?

In a way, I'm actually proud of Yahoo and Jerry Yang for saying, "No" to Ballmer, and even though I fully expect that you will win this battle in the short term and take over Yahoo, you will lose in the long term because you have lost sight of why Google has become the dominant player in the Internet...