No small and promising startup would be able to provide the amount of data that yahoo has, or that yahoo and microsoft together could bring in. Which could do into refining the search result that provide better results.
Its not about money when it comes to search, google didn't have billions of dollars when it started but it did have access to yahoo when it first started which allowed it to adjust search results better as time went on.
There is no such thing as great free services that I can think of. Maybe free for the taking, but not free for operating. Most anything good anymore, costs somebody something. In one way or another, the operating costs will be taken from some people somewhere.
No joke unfortunately. Msn can gain ground on google long term by buying out facebook and also smaller search engines but they would have been an instant threat if they bought yahoo. Jerry yang is a moron who just cost yahoo shareholders so much instant cash.
Lol, I hate Microsoft--and even I think that Yahoo would be better with them. Yahoo is going down hill quick, in fact--their stocks were the higher with a MSN bid then they were without it. Yahoo rejecting them will come back to bite them.
GMTA..... yahoo will be worth $13 per share, within the next 7-12 months. their board will get sued for failing to accept Bill Gate's generous offer (DUH).
Yes Microsoft read this and fix your search engines spiders to index more pages, I would love to be able to gain traffic from you.