Are Yahoo and MSN to Merge?
In one of his article (Icahn moves to replace Yahoo board, restart Microsoft talks) Rob Lever is discussing an issue of Carl Icahn's efforts to reopen merger talks between Yahoo and Microsoft.
Is this merge going to be beneficial to any one of the companies?
Yahoo is an old soldier who was the first to enter an era of online marketing and proved to be a reliable and easy to use; it's quite popular and delivers good results on paid search listing as well.
MSN on other hand has a completely different image that was damaged by monopoly alligations against Bill Gates, Xbox360 disaster, software problems and of cause a complete failure to compete with Yahoo & Google on online marketing scene.
This merge will prove MSN failure to compete on its own and, despite a software monopoly, to create a good quality adCenter, build on MSN experience and Yahoo & Google examples.
For Yahoo the merge may mean a loss of its strong brand image as well as danger of destruction for its existing "networks" and service.
It’s hard to imaging that Yahoo’s innovation slowdown, MSN’s lack of market share and inability of both to compete with Google will be resolved by this merge - two bad never make one good.
