Microsoft and Yahoo form partnership – It isn’t Yahsoft…it is Microhoo.

Have you ever noticed that when a merger, joint venture, or even when a research paper is published, that the person who is the TRUE leader in the deal (and make no mistake there must be a leader), is listed first.

If you go to B. L. & T law firm, you can COUNT on the fact that B. is the leader and L and T are subservient to some degree or another. So enter the wacky world of search engines.

This morning , Microsoft announced a search engine “partnership” with Yahoo. It is a 10 year deal that has possibly wide ranging implications for search engine marketing. Here’s my understanding so far.

• Yahoo will now be powered by MSN (yet another indicator of who’s on top – so to speak). “Savings” (read: layoffs) at Yahoo? $250 million
• MSN will benefit from Yahoo’s sales force to get more ads on their search engine.
• Yahoo will be compensated for those sales, ostensibly giving them a $500 million boost in revenue.

But does Yahoo really win? No. They are capitulating…which (IMHO) was the entire idea behind MSNs launch of Bing (or rather re-launch of MSN branded as Bing).

A couple of things to remember in all of this fun.

1) Microsoft is in the driver’s seat here. Period. Point. End of Story. Yahoo was losing fight after fight. It is Micro-hoo all the way. The agreement makes it clear to me that this is the end of the road long term for Yahoo both as a brand and as a search engine.

2) Microsoft may or may not be the real winner…being in control of the Titanic was not anymore of a winning hand than being in control of a smaller ship that hits an iceberg. It still sank.

3. Yahoo was spending HOW MUCH on their R&D on search?? With those kind of mediocre results? Wow…

4. I truly would like for a competitor to Google to step forward. As I posted earlier about bing being different lipstick same pig. Is this any different? I think the pig is a) more profitable b) bigger but c) fundamentally the same irrelevant pig…

I would enjoy your thoughts on this!