History Shows Logic Behind Microsoft's Partnership Offer to Yahoo!

5/19 - "At first I thought WTF? Has Microsoft become that impotent? The scoop is that Microsoft would work with Yahoo in some type of joint venture involving search advertising. It makes you to wonder what they have in mind. Joint venture? Transaction? Is this not a bad way to get into the search advertising field?

I decided to walk the dogs and think hard about this deal and what Microsoft has in mind. Then it struck me, that this situation is eerily similar to something that happened way back."

"...in 1992 (Microsoft) decided to form a partnership with Sybase and created a Microsoft SQL Server database based on IP from Sybase.In the beginning this venture seemed odd and only helped Microsoft to a degree.

What makes that situation similar to now is that Sybase like Yahoo is not king of the hill. Then it was IBM, and Oracle, now its Google. Then Sybase had good ...