In my prior post about Yahoo! and the quote attributed to Terry Semel, I had actually been posting about how the Internet does not really allow for complete competition complete market control. Thus, no reason to believe anyone has "no chance". Why? Because as I was going to say, there is no natural monopoly to form. Oh sure, you can talk about this or that regarding Microsoft - clearly there is fodder. But all things aside, proprietary systems like hardware are much easier to lock down. What keeps a person from switching to a different search engine?

At any rate, this article from The Economist - Is Google The New Microsoft (subscription required) touches on exactly this point. For those without a subscription to The Economist, here is a free link to the complete article simply retitled Google = Microsoft. (This site may require free registration)

At any rate, as the article rightly points out, among other things:

"Try to avoid using Microsoft's software for a day, particularly if you work in an office, and you will have difficulty; surviving a day without Google is relatively easy. It has strong competitors in all the markets in which it operates: search, online advertising, mapping, software services and so on. Large firms such as Yahoo, which previously farmed searches out to Google, have switched to other technologies. Google's market share in search has fallen from a high of about 80 percent to about 50 percent today."

Additionally, it touches upon the fact about why Microsoft and IBM were able to command such success. Point being? Yahoo! should not be promulgating notions about the search business being over. If it is for them, then indeed it will be.

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