Rumours of a Yahoo! and Microsoft marriage are greatly exaggerated

At least as it turns out. eBay and Yahoo! have announced a partnership that has Yahoo! search and ad network plastered liberally throughout eBay by 2007 and eBay’s PayPal sprinkled throughout Yahoo!’s various media properties e.g. Yahoo!’s Publisher Network, Yahoo! hosting services, etc.

What I am curious about is how this will affect areas where these two overlap e.g. Skype and Yahoo Messenger or how about Yahoo! Auctions Japan (Yahoo! kept their auctions there because they are the eBay of Japan)

I know why they did it but it does seem a bit overly risk adverse to do it at this point in the game. What would have been riskier for Yahoo! but potentially more valuable long term would have been if they and Amazon merged, at least that’s how I see it.

Yahoo! could pull a Google and monetise everything like Google Base does (not exactly hard to copy), which would assist in eBay’s destruction, therefore eliminating a rival while growing stronger organically (always better for investors), but a merger to Amazon would allow Yahoo! do not only copy Google Base for all non-standard saleable items like jobs, amateur video, blogging content, etc, but then control the sale of standard products like books, TVs, stereos, etc. You would have an e-Commerce, search, and data warehousing giant.

Now to be honest companies as powerful as Google and Yahoo! don’t need to be more powerful in my eyes but Yahoo! could have done better if they hadn’t been overcome by the risk of Google.

Besides few partners ever walk away happy in life or business