I’m curious to hear what readers have to think about Microsoft’s $44.6 billion dollar bid for Yahoo. With all that has been written of this move, I’ve seen almost nothing on what the actual “synergy” is supposed to be.

Microsoft and Yahoo’s combined WW market share for search is still less than Google’s. Correlated to search market share is online advertising revenue, where again Google trumps Microhoo. So if the individual parts cannot stand up to the giant, how can the sum? Does Microsoft think that their acquisition team can make 2+2 equal more than 4?

Certainly there are cost advantages, and the acquisition will allow Microsoft to reap significant scale advantages. But success in the World of online advertising comes from users and relevancy- which are reliant on technology, not scale of operations. You don’t get better products just by doubling the size of your engineering team.

Obviously, Microsoft is no dumb animal- one has to assume they have a well thought-out and forward-looking strategy for all of this.

The question is- what is it?