What to make of a Yahoo! combination with Microsoft

After being out sick for a few days I wanted to get back in the swing of things by putting a few thoughts out there on Microsoft's proposal to acquire Yahoo!

While lots is being written about the financial implications for shareholders and the remaining Yahoos! what isn't being widely discussed is what Microsoft is likely to do with the assets that it garners from this acquisition. At this point despite the protests from Yahoo's management and board it simply seems like posturing to get a better price at which to close the transaction.

If you're like me I rarely use Yahoo's dated search engine (if I use it for 1 out of 10 searches - which arguably is 1 more than I ever use MSN) the loss of this part of the web really won't be any loss at all.

For my own use the biggest asset that Yahoo! has is the strength of the firm's Yahoo Finance brand. It's always boggled my mind that Yahoo never attempted to move to a more powerful subscription tool for this part of the service given the growth in equity investing among small investors. Frequently Yahoo Finance actually beats major firms with dedicated wire services to tracking and releasing company specific news. In fact, Google Finance sources a number of its articles from Yahoo Finance and typically lags Yahoo in terms of updating the news wire feed to its site. While the firm did leverage traditional click-through ads as a means of monetizing the traffic to Yahoo Finance myself along with others would have gladly shelled out for an annual subscription with the promise of a few extra features.

At this point I'm busy hunting for an alternative but must admit few good options exist that enable a personal investor to get a comprehensive wire service coverage across a portfolio of stocks. While we still have some time since the deal is not yet done you can clearly see the headlights of the approaching Microsoft train heading toward Yahoo!

Send in any alternatives you have and I'll update this post.