Yahoo As A Portal Without Search...

Blaise Zerega says enough already.  The new new plan from Carl Icahn and Microsoft to break-up Yahoo is quite provocative. Not for the crazy different ways that each camp is trying to assess the value of Yahoo's search business, but for what it says about the state of the Web in 2008.

We all know what search as search looks like: Google in its most basic form. But a portal without a primary search component? Well, my gentle reader, close your eyes and imagine the Yahoo home page without the little search box, or keep the search box, but insert a little Google logo next to it.

Yahoo completely disentangled from search -- and by that I mean a search business owned and operated by Microsoft -- is a media company. One -- cough, cough, as I have written before, whose core strengths are community and communications. It's a tough business, but it's not a bad business.

But how much would such an entity be worth? And if indeed, Icahn succeeds in forcing to jettison Yahoo to jettison search, what's the fate of this newly formed media company? To bring back Terry Semel? I don't see that happening,nor would I recommend it. Instead, we'll see Yahoo broken up further with the best bits getting snapped up by big media and by private equity firms.

However, this doesn't mean that the sum of the parts somehow will prove greater than the whole. Gone will be any premiums and goodwill payments from Microsoft. And without that cash, it will be tough for Icahn to say he has served the interest of Yahoo shareholders. But then, that's never been the point.