It’s no secret now that Microsoft has put in a $44.6 billion stock bid to take over Yahoo. This bid was made to presumably compete with Google in search and for advertising dollars. This move will most assuredly benefit many companies who use display advertisements.

Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo can leverage their large networks to show display advertisements. But, will this merger benefit publishers? Right now, Google dominates the market as even the smallest of Web publisher who wants to make money online can sign up for and start displaying Google AdSense ads.

I’ve also talked recently about Microsoft’s ContentAds program for publishers, which is still in beta testing as well as the Yahoo publisher program, which is likewise still in beta testing. With the merger, the future of both of these programs comes into question.

Will these programs be merged or will they operate independently of each other? Will the merger cause so much confusion that it delays the rollout of either of these programs to the public significantly? Publishers have now been waiting three years for Yahoo to open up its beta publisher program to the public and this merger could cause yet another unbearable delay to those waiting in the wings.

Another issue is how will the merger affect the search results for both MSN and Yahoo? If both companies combine resources and algorithms and ultimately deliver the same results to users, most likely users will opt for one search engine over the other, hurting the lesser of the two. If the search results are not improved significantly for one or both of the search engines then Google continues to dominate the field.

The merger and acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft if it happens at all is expected to take a very long time, with many hurdles to jump in the U. S. and in Europe. In the meantime, will many of the programs for both search giants be on hold, waiting for the outcome of the merger? If progress is delayed, then Google may take this opportunity to gain even more ground and become even more dominant in the search and online advertising arena, and this isn’t exactly the results that Microsoft and Yahoo are after.

Filed under: Search Engines