With a myriad of search providers currently out in the webosphere, the news of Microsoft making a 51 Billion Dollar offer for Yahoo has some interesting ramifications.
Obviously it creates two large competitors to duke it out over the major market share of the search space.
I am not sure if people realise the effect this consolidation will have; moving three providers that suck up 90% of the market into two will mean a shift in the dynamics of the market.
But what flow on effect will that have on the rest of the Internet.
Quite possibly it will mean that smaller search providers will have to either shrivel due to the huge gravitational pull of thr two giants or move and evolve into something nimble and niche like. These new search providers will possibly provide industry related search or be the R&D areas of the web for search.
Talking as a web designer, it will mean a cleaner job in trying to optimise for two major providers rather than three.
I already make Google my priority when it comes to rankings and optimisation, but this change will mean we will need to make a necessity of optimising for both.
Microsoft Live Search is a nothing here in New Zealand, especially since Yahoo started supplying the search functionality to Xtra the largest ISP in the country. Their search and presence essentially went to zero.
Ironic then that Xtra having annoyed all of its customers with a huge botch up of the whole transition will possibly be back in Microsoft\’s monopolistic arms.
I am a big fan of Google, they have done some extraordinary things on the web since their inception, this will be a true test of the business character and their innovative nature.
Onwards and Upwards
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