Google Still Unchallenged

The Microsoft-Yahoo soap opera seems to have reached its last episode: After months of squabbling and snippiness, last weekend Microsoft yanked back its purchase offer, ending its bid to buy Yahoo. It's tempting to greet the news with a yawn. In the end, nothing happened. And even if Microsoft had succeeded in its bid to buy Yahoo, individual Web users would have waited months, or maybe years, to see noteworthy changes from the deal. The odds of any exciting new chapters in the story are low as well. The unhappy couple could patch things up but will probably move on to the mutual-recriminations stage. Yahoo may seek comfort in the arms of another Internet company -- maybe IAC, maybe a newly spun-off AOL, maybe somebody else -- while Microsoft can talk about how Yahoo wouldn't have been any good for it in the first place. But whatever these two companies wind up doing, one question will still await an answer: Who's going to provide Google some tougher competition?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050703740.html
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