Introduction

Interestingly enough this power clash has been going on for more than a year now. Even though nothing concrete has come up from it. Even with the latest news about Yahoo and Ebay working together in Japan does not change a thing. EBay withdrew from Japan in 2002 after only two years of operation.Could not compete with well established site Yahoo Japan and Rakuten. If you think about it, in nutshell it's all about making money via online advertisement search, affiliates, upsell etc.(btw Google is the leader so far).

Relationship Recap

More than 1 and 1/2 year ago Ebay had good relationship with Google. Ebay used Google as primary medium of ads on the site.Something happened?

Yahoo joined forces with Ebay in May 2006. This was a win win situation for both. At that time it was believed this could be a Google Killer, but Google survived and possibly is much better off. Yahoo has been in the abyss for the long time, needs more strategic thinking to come out of waters.

Then came the rumours(i like rumours!) about Microsoft buying Yahoo which has not become true yet.Ebay expanded in VIOP by buying out Skype, that did no do much wonders either.

Yahoo has a huge stake in Alibaba.com, which went public last month and is doing great so far. Ebay is looking to make it way in China. Can there be a relationship there? possibly yes.

Vital Statistics

Let's look at some of vital stats for these titans.

	Based on the market cap of Ebay and Yahoo,it seems like they can esaily be swallowed by Microsoft resulting in a bigger force. For Google it might make sense to buy out Yahoo and just dump it and leverage EBay platform to extend it self further.
	Based on the Search Engine Market share Google has a majority (57%) and has been expanding. All other3 combined is less than 36%. So even it they teemed up they would be shy of Google.
	Based on current stock value and performance over last 5 years. All the 3 taken together does not come even close to Google.
	Based on Site Rank Yahoo leads with Google in second followed by Ebay and Microsoft. That implies Yahoo and its allies need to capalize more on traffic.

How does google do it so well?.Om Malik says "Its Google Infrastructure is its Stregic Advantage"

It difficult to predict which way things would move but suffice it to say that Ebay,Yahoo and Microsoft combined can possible be an answer for Google.This is yet to be seen but so far does not appear to be so.

More later. What do you think?