Today's Wall Street Journal reports that eBay is in talks with Microsoft and Yahoo! to potentially form a strategic alliance against Google.
The net industry is really showing how truly volatile and liquid it is. Where Yahoo! used to reign supreme in search and eBay in auctions, just this week both companies are reporting numbers that are lackluster, to say the least.
Once upon a time, two years ago, Yahoo! and eBay were heralded in academic classrooms and Wall Street boardrooms as the new leaders in their respective sectors. Their competitors (Alta Vista, Excite, MSN, Amazon, Pricewatch, Yahoo! Auctions, etc.) were all in distant second and third places; Yahoo! and eBay seemed destined to be de facto internet titans.
Out of left field though, Google has come blazing onto the scene and the buzz won't seem to stop. In less than two years, Google has surpassed any analyst's wildest dreams and reached a market cap of $130 billion. Compare that to Yahoo!'s market cap of $46 billion and eBay's market cap of $49.37 billion.
It's no surprise then that the Journal is reporting alliances may be in the making. Details, of course, are vague, but based on their business models the likely synergies would be attained through user base cross-selling of search, advertising, and auctions.
It seems that the once clearly defined internet sectors are all ablur as Google continues to redefine not the net per se but rather how to generate revenue from the net.
WSJ article must be a subscriber to access, here's another reference.
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