Besides, people can change their web browser in minutes, too, but guess what? They don’t. Hence IE still has 80% and Firefox pats themselves on the back for a relatively paltry 14%.

And at least with browsers I know which one I’m using. With search, 99.9% of people will have zero idea of knowing just what goes on when they hit enter. The beauty of search — to find even the “little guy’s” site — can and likely will be corrupted into only revealing the highest “bidders”, no matter in what form those “bids” take.

In fact, the ease with which a search could be corrupted is almost frightening. And you would have a huge hand in controlling what people see, so it’s not just limited to a money grab either. It could be used as a tool to shape public opinion about a great many topics.

Microsoft may or may not “destroy” Yahoo. But I have no doubt a Yahoo-Google alliance would become an enormous entity that would eventually have to be disassembled. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Yahoo/Google is just an advertising contract and so nothing would be destroyed, except insofar as Yahoo’s businesses were troubled and had to be closed/dismantled.

So if I had to choose between the two, I would prefer Yahoo/Google to Yahoo/Microsoft.

I don’t think the search business has as high a barrier to entry as you might think. The fact that Microsoft could not break through Google’s success indicates that better search and a good corporate personality count for more than monopolistic advantages.

You can change the FireFox or Safari default search engine in minutes …

D