It's been a year and a half since I have been following the Google versus Yahoo versus MSN war. Unlike the US-Iraq war there are no clear winners in this one. One salvo from there, retaliation from another camp, another missile from yet another camp. Fight fight! As long as we the consumers are getting the best of it, enjoy it till it lasts.

I say YahOOOO!

If Google can do it so can we. If Google has trunks full of bandwidth and hard disc space, so do we. Google here we come. That's from the mind of a Yahoo strategist. Ten days hence the Ides of March, an announcement. A full four hundred percent, a jump. An email service that matches Gmail, an email called Yahoo mail.

Didn't quite get it? Ok let me put copy paste the news agency update "Internet portal Yahoo Inc has announced that users of its free web mail service will have one gigabyte of storage space starting late in April."

The spoils of war

You have 10 seconds to list the recent acquisitions of Yahoo, Google and MSN. Over and out!

10 seconds, you must be kidding! These are giants fighting and how can I be expected to remember. My forte isn't really chronicling as differentiated from strategy. Anyways, let me try.

The first battle- the summer of 2003

The summer heat combined with acquired lust. The battle of the search engines begins. A $1.6 billion missile fired from Yahoo camp by acquiring Overture.com. What's war without history? To put it in perspective a little history.

Yahoo in 90's launches its directory search. Its immense popularity combined with the dotcom boom attracts other players like Goto.com in 1997 and Google.com in the later years to launch their searches. Goto.com is later is rechristened as Overture.com and its paid search model becomes immensely popular. Google.com imitates the leader and introduces a similar pay per search. Its main service being an auction room for advertisers whose bidding determines how prominently their link is displayed. Overture.com considers Google service similar and sues it for patent infringement.

Meanwhile, the paid-search market grows to over $2 billion a year, compared with about $8 billion for other, more conventional online advertising, and is growing furiously. Other portals generally use one of the two as partners -- MSN uses Overture, AOL uses Google. Yahoo has been using its now archrival Google for few searches. In 2003 Yahoo acquired Inktomi to replace Google's technology.

The MSN dimension

War, that too on the digital battlefield and without Microsoft being a part of it. Impossible!

Remember Microsoft is the same company that has used it immense clout to crush smaller companies that came its way. The great Netscape Crush is a perfect example that comes to my mind. Microsoft wants dominance. Hail Microsoft! Dominance on the web demands the browser market and the search engine market. In January this year, 133 million Americans conducted 5 billion searches, according to ComScore qSearch, which measures Internet usage. Microsoft, as before, is late for the party. Remember Mr Gates is the same person responsible for these gems:
1981 - "640 KB ought to be enough for anybody."
1993 - "The Internet? We are not interested in it"

Nevertheless, Mr Money Bags has decided to pump in more than $100 million in MSN search technology.

After the great Netscape Crush, the browser market already belongs to Microsoft, (I know Mozilla spoilt the party. But the Microsoft flag is still high). What's left is the search engine market.

That raises an interesting question. Can Mr Gates do a Netscape with Google?