We pose a few unanswerable questions on Microhoo Search

After all the hubbub yesterday following the announcement of a deal between the Internet’s favorite "will they or won’t they?" couple (Microsoft and Yahoo, not Ross and Rachel), tons of questions remain. For one, how is it going to feel to be a Microsoft sales exec once this deal goes through? Probably as good as it feels right now to be a Yahoo engineer who worked for years on Project Panama. Your client comes to you next year with a large spend opportunity, but wants to integrate their search and display efforts. And you’ll have to say, "Sorry, call Yahoo." Secondly, how much confidence can team MSN have in Microsoft’s commitment to the online ad business, when throughout the negotiation process, rumors swirled that Yahoo would take over display ads sales as well? The only reason Yahoo didn’t, it seems, was that it would be too complex. "The display market in general is more complicated than search," said Hilary Schneider executive vp, Yahoo North America in an interview yesterday. "This really ensures that we hit the ground running. We have nothing else to announce today, but who knows what the future holds?" And lastly, why didn’t Microsoft insist that Yahoo Search adopt the Bing brand and the Bing user experience? The company is spending close to $100 million to get people to think of Bing as a better alternative to Google, which appears to be having a decent impact. But Yahoo is still going to be able to make search look and function however it wants. As Yusuf Mehdi, senior vp, online audience business group at Microsoft, explained, “It’s not actually the Bing experience.” Instead, Yahoo Search will simply carry some sort of “powered by Bing” logo (something like this?). Seems like a waste of all that new market share the company is gaining.

—Posted by Mike Shields