1 Executive Summary
After the successful acquisition of Yahoo!, Microsoft has increased its share on the internet search market and become market leader in web-service subscribers. However, it is still far behind Google in the searching advertising market.

Although Google is by far the leading power in search advertising today, internet search technology is still in its infancy and there are much room for improvement. Microsoft shall invest on the R & D research of search technology and the integration of search with its current products. Meanwhile, it shall also invest in the fast growing display advertising market.

Advancement in technology has enable internet to become a platform in its own right. This brings about the rise of …show more content…

The E.U. court also handed Microsoft large amount of fine [32].

Today, Microsoft is probably the biggest and most profitable software company in the world with annual revenue of US $51.12 billion in the year of 2007 [9]. With the mission statement “To help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential” [10], Microsoft continues to make significant stride to a wide range of IT business.

2.2.2 Yahoo!
Yahoo!’s origin can be tracked back in 1994 when Jerry Yang and David Filo started a directory to keep track of their personal interest on the internet. This directory called Yahoo! soon gained popularity among web users as a single place to find useful websites. The business was incorporated in 1995 and involved to become a major player in internet searching and web portal by the late 90s [11][12].

Yahoo! was hit hard by the doc-com bubble burst in 2001 but nevertheless survived. It since then partnered with telecommunications and internet providers to create content rich service. Despite offering ever rich content, its core business internet searching suffered lack of progress and gave way to Google[12][13].

The mission statement of Yahoo! is “to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge”. By the time of its acquisition by Microsoft, Yahoo was the second must used