IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER

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Like many freshmen in high school, I admired the class three years ahead of me. Seniors were so cool.

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During the gleeful homecoming week, the Seniors adopted their class theme: It Just Doesn’t Matter. It was their own brand of school spirit and camaraderie - their own way of saying school spirit and togetherness don’t really matter when each of them would soon be facing recycling as a freshman at a college or the cold reality of working.

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The irony is that their hall decorations - an homage to the black and white UPC symbols - and their other activities that week displayed a level of school spirit and class cohesion that remains unmatched to this day.

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Irony aside, I was reminded of that class’s mantra when I heard the news that MSN has bid $44.6 billion to buy Yahoo. And get this: Yahoo isn’t even for sale. When the news broke, Google’s stock rose and Microsoft’s dropped.

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As someone working closely with the three major search engines, let me emphasize that MSN offering to buy Yahoo just doesn’t matter. Even if MSN manages to interest Yahoo (a company that has been trying to rebuild itself for the past three years;) even if MSN can convince federal regulators to let it buy Yahoo; even if it all works out and becomes the single largest purchase in the technical world IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER.

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Google is the preeminent search engine because it operates beautifully. No search engine provides services for webmasters as well as Google. No company has been able to harness the power of online advertising as well as Google.

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Years ago, Google and Yahoo started out as innovative companies that brought new thinking to the business scene. MSN, now called Live Search, wandered onto the scene, sporting the same business practices that had worked well five years before. Yahoo faltered when it fell under the management of similarly-styled executives. In some ways, MSN and Yahoo were meant for each other. I hope the sale goes through.

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Google has stayed focused on search. Once they mastered the ability to generate (massive amounts of) income from search-based ads, they began an expansion of those ads into content. In that context, the purchases of Blogger and YouTube make sense (cents.)

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MSN and Yahoo developed their own content before establishing a meaningful way to generate income from search. More importantly, they forgot to focus on their search algorithms while distracting themselves with “other services.” Google’s focus paid off.

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If the purchase goes through, will the two search engines combine into one? Will they be able to combine their collective knowledge? Will the new company be able to make enough money to even come close to covering the $44 billion?

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It just doesn’t matter.

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Like 80% of the rest of us all, I’ll look it up on Google.

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