With the way deals are happening in the tech space and Yahoo! having five consecutive quarters of unimpressive results, the talk about who is going to buy them continues. From a Yahoo shareholder perspective absolutely I’d like to see them acquired but I don’t want to see them going to Google. Let’s face it, Google will not be able to resist being evil if they buy Yahoo. I don’t care how good you or I think they’ve been up until now, domination in and of itself is evil. They will own too many pieces on the chess board. Another 10% of the search market would make their fortress nearly impenetrable.

And I like Google.

I haven’t changed my position one iota from my post in December 2006 offering 10 reasons Microsoft will *not* acquire Yahoo in 2007, one reason they might. The only reason they should buy Yahoo is an offensive move to keep Yahoo out of Google’s clutches (and yes, disclaimer time: I still own Google stock too). Pay special attention to #5 where I wrote that Microsoft should buy StumbleUpon. Why? Because that’s a tool being used by countless geeks to promote content to sites like digg, Reddit and others. It’s an easy and relatively inexpensive ticket to the party. But eBay pulled the trigger before Microsoft on that deal. I’m not even sure they attended that party which says something too.

So, if not Microsoft and Yahoo cutting a deal, then who?

The dark horse in this discussion remains eBay. Let’s not forget they pulled a multi-billion dollar deal on Skype a leading force in PC to PC voice chat, are the dominant force with auctions online, dominate person to person payments with PayPal and with the recent acquisition of StumbleUpon own a healthy share of the serendipitious surfing market. They also have a management philosophy that better fits with Yahoo than Microsoft. Being a significant player in search has to appeal to them. Think about it: they could lock up a yellow pages style listing service (Skype), auction search verticle, social site search (stumbleupon) in one package. While they might not have an overall search product that competes, they’d have niche products far better than anything Google offers.

Hmm.

The NY Post is saying that Microsoft is tired of being left at the altar. That’s obvious, isn’t it? They keep getting edged out on deals by others that they should be making. Overpaying to keep Yahoo away from Google would be a wise business move.

Whatever happens, I still don’t believe this gets done in 2007 but if Yahoo! has another couple disappointing quarters, the new year could ring in a new suitor and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was eBay.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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