MS bid tried to check Google

By S. Raghotham

Bangalore, May 4: Micro-soft is the leader when it comes to the desktop, with its Windows operating system commanding over 90 per cent of the worldwide market. But the Redmond giant has always been slow on the uptake when it comes to Internet strategy. The bid to acquire Yahoo was a move to correct one such instance in which it let Google come in and become its biggest threat.

After its success in the browser war with Netscape Communications, Micros-oft has been facing challenges on multiple fronts in the internet space. And the biggest threats have come from Google, starting from its search engine technology which has beaten everyone else, including Micros-oft and Yahoo, hollow. It then tied its search engine dominance to online advertising, which is growing.

Such is its dominance that in the first quarter, Google earned $5.19 billion in revenues from search and online advertising, while Microsoft earned less than $1 billion from its entire online business. Yahoo earned less than $2 billion.

Now, Google is using its growing financial muscle and its engineering talent to move all computing online. With Google threatening Microsoft’s core business, the Redmount giant tried to combine Yahoo’s dominant global online presence and its engineering expertise to checkmate Google.