Steve Ballmer has done a wonderful job with XBOX 360, even though they have some overheating issues. However, when it comes to search he is in 4^th place and he's not having it! He wants to beat Google at search. In doing so he is banging his head against the wall and is seriously considering putting Microsoft in mountains of debt so he can become number 2. That's right folks number 2.

Instead of spending money on fixing the algorithm of the MSN search engine, Steve Ballmer wants to spend $42 billion dollars so he can become number 2. If he were to spend $500 million dollars, he can probably hire the best minds in the world to develop a far superior search engine. Then spend another $500 million dollars on publicity doing the same exact kind of demonstrations Google did to demonstrate its superior search in comparison with Yahoo when it first burst onto the search scene. Except MSN would be doing search comparisons vs. Google to demonstrate its superiority.

It feels as though Steve Ballmer is trying to use the brute force of money to win. However, it is time Mr. Ballmer understands that you do not win when you come in second place. Investors want to invest in the industry leader, the best in breed if you will, not the guy who comes in second place. I for one as a shareholder of Microsoft find this move on Mr. Ballmer's part highly irresponsible and utterly futile.

There should be no mergers between the search engines whatsoever. Competition among the search engines is good for the consumer and is good for the state of search overall. What consumers want is choice. If Google was the only search engine in the world, here is what it would probably do, make every search result a pay-per-click paid search result. Searchers would be left with no legitimate search results, only sponsored search listings. Imagine that, a world where Google can make money on each and every click. This would stifle knowledge, stifle growth and stifle the sharing of information. You leave it to greedy corporate suits and that is exactly the world they would create. However, causing competition among the search engines “forces” the search engines to have legitimate search results show up and not strictly sponsored search results. For example, if Google were to provide strictly sponsored search results, then everyone would start using Yahoo, MSN or Ask.

Imagine if the top 4 search engines in the world were like the oil companies and search results were a commodity. Imagine all the search engine companies making secret deals that keep organic or natural search results deeply buried and have all of search results be sponsored listings. Much like the oil companies that have very apparent secret deals to keep gas prices artificially high, the search engines would have a vested interest to work together, merge and artificially keep organic search results deeply buried or get rid of them all together.

In a world that is driven by content so that they can push ads down our throats, beat us to death with it, until we have dreams at night of the guy from the “Head On” commercial yelling at us to apply it directly to the forehead. This needs to stop. I am all for industry and business growth, but this much commercialization is over the top. I really wish Google had never gone public, ditto about Yahoo. Things would have been so much better. Just to give you a TV analogy, in the past we used to have to change the channel when a commercial came on, now the commercial is directly in the movie. One product placement after another. Same goes with all the websites that you see that have the Google Adsense and Yahoo Search Marketing ads directly on the site. There are books written by so called experts that teach people how to develop websites and conceal Google Adsense ads so that people inadvertently click on them thinking the ad is actually part of the site.

The bottom line is competition among search engines is a good thing. Mergers are the worst thing that can happen to search. Innovation ceases the day competition subsides.

Moral of the story – Yahoo and MSN should never merge, instead they should each innovate and take search to a another level.

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