Death Of Yahoo! The Search Engine

The U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have approved the Microsoft, Yahoo! deal. This is not an ordinary deal. This deal will bring the Yahoo! search era to an end.
 
The existence of Yahoo! as an independent entity owes a lot to the anti-trust advocates, European Commission and the co-founder Jerry Yang. Microsoft might have gone for a hostile take-over if there was no European Commission.

However, some 'pawns' had been put in place to break Yahoo!'s will-power and force them to enter the deal. Corporate raider Carl Icahn set out on his journey to bring Yahoo! to their knees.

Carl began his Yahoo! raid when the management, led by Jerry Yang, rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft. He did what he does best -- increase his stakes in the company and then claim a seat on the board. Jerry Yang had to give in; Carl got a seat on Yahoo! board and demanded new management. Yang was forced to resign from the very company he had co-founded. Carl is also believed to be instrumental in bringing in Carol Bartz as the new CEO of Yahoo!.

Carl did his job -- forced Yang to resign from the board, and ensured the deal with Microsoft. As he admitted in an interview with Reuters, "When I joined the Board, the company was in a state of turmoil. In the period since then, we have all worked together to achieve much for the Company, most notably bringing Carol on to be the CEO and then consummating the search deal with Microsoft."

But Carl never succeeded in selling the company to Microsoft.  All he could do was weaken Yahoo! and force a deal with Microsoft. Now with both goals achieved he has no role at Yahoo! so he walked away to hunt down another company.
 
Yahoo! is going through what Apple was going through in 1985, when Steve Jobs was thrown out of the very company he had founded. Apple began to fall and only Steve Jobs' return brought the charisma back to Apple. Yahoo! may not have that chance.
 
The Microsoft deal has started to put nails in Yahoo!'s coffin. Search is today the gateway to the massive universe of information scattered in the WWW. Yahoo! has given all the keys to their gateway to Microsoft. 
 
Since Yahoo! search results will redirect to Bing, it will appear as if Bing has gained market share and Yahoo! will continue to fall. There is nothing for Yahoo!, except for some returns for investors, in this deal. This deal gives Yahoo! another booster shot to keep walking towards the cliff.

The end of Yahoo!, the search engine, will make it easier for Microsoft to later acquire the company. As a result, Yahoo! won't be a 'player' in the search engine domain and no eyebrows will raise at the acquisition.
 
Yahoo! the search engine will soon be forgotten. It will join the ranks of Goto.com and Alta Vista.
 
Adiós Yahoo!