Microsoft And Yahoo In Takeover Talks

News Ltd reports that the neverending story of Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Yahoo has at last reached the point where they are at least talking to each other directly.

While neither side is offering any guarantees, the Yahoo share price has risen as a result.

If the bid is successful, it will still take at least 12 months to overcome regulatory hurdles, but that isn’t the only major problem.

In countries such as Australia, both companies have teamed with local entities to promote their brand.

Here, Microsoft has tied itself to the Nine television network while Yahoo has linked to the 7 network

While a simple solution would be to allow both brands to continue in the market, the problem would remain that they’d both owned by the same company.

This is further aggravated by the fact that these two TV networks are the dominant players in their market as well.

Another concern that I have is that a Microhoo competing with Google creates a duopoly in the search market, and that’s something that I dislike almost as much as a monopoly!