And all for free. I wonder what they'd charge for seats for this kind of drama?

Ah well, for what it's worth, I reckon Microsoft will crucify either themselves or themselves and Yahoo with all this soap opera. As for me, I'd like to see a court case tossed at Microsoft by its shareholders for being Microsoft being such dumb bunnies to try such an expensive stunt that shows no real return. Ah well, if I was a serf Ballmer would have thrown a chair or few at me for saying that :P

Monopoly! Not wonderful Micro$haft No wonder they're shedding crocodile tears. Where's the justice in someone else having a monopoly. They want to embed it in their own operating system. I suppose they'll now bring out their FUD army. I am no lover of any of them but if M$ get hold of it there will be even more vulnerabilities. No thanks. I'm getting to grips with Ubuntu Linux and enjoying it. Bye M$.

to the exclamation points after! every! word! in the headline? A fine reg tradition if you ask me. :(

On one hand, if MS buy Yahoo, I will have to give up Flickr....

On the other hand, if Google start getting into bed with them, we're letting yet another IT giant creep towards a monopoly...

"On the other hand, if Google start getting into bed with them, we're letting yet another IT giant creep towards a monopoly"

I thought Google already were the search engine monopoly. Does anybody actually use Yahoo Search, Live or Ask??? The only people I know who use Live are ones who don't know they are using it because they think a browser is the web and it happens to be IE on their machine.

... well, certainly not heaven. But at least it's probably sent the dancing sweat-monster into a paroxysm of fury. To me, that's a wothwhile result.

As to who acquires whom, storm clouds loom. Think back to the Time Warner-AOL deal - what a success *that* turned out to be.

@Doug Bird

El Reg listened to me! I hated that '!' convention :)

Sounds better than MicroHoo! I think Google should swallow Yahoo!

MIcrosoft - 'This would make the market far less competitive'

ha ha! and so it comes to pass.....the bottom lips out because someone else has got a bigger market share than them..boo fucking hoo..

But what about Yahgle!?

Or Gahogle?

Or Yaghogleo?

OK, enough.

"Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands."

...as opposed to leveraging retailer / manufacturer relationships to maintain > 90% of the web browser and desktop OS market, which is PERFECTLY OK AND LEGAL.

The sentiment of MSoft's statement is fine. The motivation is dubious.

Pot, meet Kettle.

GooHoo...

Obviously!

"Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands."

Apparently the Reality Distortion Field is functioning just fine in Redmond. That is infuriating and ridiculous all at the same time... How much market share is Windows at on the desktop, exactly? Apple is about 7% now, Linux is, let's say 2%, the rest probably make up 0.01%.

What if 90% of Windows users would use a Google service? That's basically everyone in the western world... class Pot: while(black) { kettle(); }

I've seen more maturity in a kindergarden... I think this might actually turn out good for microsoft, since now they can scream monopoly bloody murder. And it'll hurt Google more than it hurt them in the past, because I never remember microsoft issuing "we are holy, now you know" proclamations.

Pot calling kettle black ?

" Microsoft fired back with a warning that a formal Yahoo-Google alliance would give Google too much control over the the search advertising market. "Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google's hands," Smith said in a statement. "This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo!"

Who's got 90 % of the desktop market again ?

Ill be off

I was until very recently a strong supporter of Yahoo and have been a heavy user of many of their services.

That was until I discovered that they had deleted all my photos from their Yahoo Photos site, without warning.

I would have gladly transferred them all over to Flickr, in fact I enquired mid last year about doing just that and was told that it wasn't possible at the time. Fast forward a few very busy months and I discover, having just bought a fancy new camera and ready to become an active photographer again, that Yahoo Photos is closed and all my photos are gone.

I have had an active Yahoo account for over a decade and have always kept my email address details up to date with them. I also have an active Flickr account. Yet I received no notification whatsoever about the shutdown of Yahoo Photos.

I'm sorry but that's just not good enough. I was worried about what to do if/when Micro$oft took over, but Yahoo have made the decision for me. I won't be using their services ever again and will now watch their demise with proactive disinterest.

it'll be ghoo!gle

How about Gahoogle! ?

Nah it'll be Yahoogle!

Got a better ring to it that.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The numbers I saw was that Google has about 55% of the searches in the US and 62% or such in the "rest of the world" (might not be exact from memory, but that's the ballpark). I don't think that would qualify as "monopoly" by any reasonable definition.

Anyway, I agree with what other said. The competition between "big 'uns" would increase, which is good, if MS bought Yahoo (assuming they are not just buying it to shut it down). On the other hand, I'm happy with my Yahoo mail and Yahoo groups, which have been serving me well for over 8 years. I shudder to imagine what MS would do to them. Probably would have the same destiny GeoCities had when Yahoo bought them: stagnate (at 15 MB per account) and die a slow death... but still walk the land amongst the undead.

Clearly, it would be even better to have the name change the exclamation mark to a question mark?

Even if I do see Google as the "stealthy evil" company, I'd rather have Yahoo in bed with them than 0wned by Micro$oft.

@jon: There was plenty of warnings for Yahoo! Photos shutdown. I never used the service, however my Yahoo email acct got warnings since at least 3 months in advance. Even my ex-girlfriend got them, and promptly downloaded back all her photo albums in advance. You should really check your Yahoo email every once in a while...

Personally I'd go with YaaGoogleHoo!

AdSense? Whats that? Oh, you mean those annoying text only adverts/links that Firefox (with the NoScript plugin) doesn't allow, not even on Google itself. The CustomiseGoogle plugin is quite good too, no more click tracking, analytics or UID cookies for you Mr Googley!

Mines the one with matching tin foil hat!

yahoogle.com already exists.

Will this mean that Google eyes will stop censoring my Adwords content ? Maybe Yahoo! will let me use the word Dell in our ad or even Latitude. You would think that abuse of a dominant position in the market which stops perfectly legitimate advertisements being published would have attracted attention by now. Pass me that telephone directory ..... what's the dialling code for Brussels ?