Yahoo / Microsoft Deal and Real Estate Search

I have had some time to chew on the Yahoo / Microsoft deal a little bit. Google has their own concerns but I wanted to break this down more from a consumer and business decision at the real estate vertical level.

From a real estate vertical, would the Yahoo / Microsoft deal be good for consumers?

#1: Product integration

MSN and Yahoo have many of the same verticals. One of which is the real estate search vertical. What would the integration of the two vertical search solutions look like? Do they keep the in house search or do they continue to use a third party?

Because Microsoft has not invested heavily in the real estate section, the integration of the real estate product may be easier than other verticals.

#2: Real estate search experience

Yahoo real estate is not powered by a third party while Microsoft real estate is powered by Move.com. Move.com has exclusive rights to power MSN real estate and recently renewed their partnership agreement. These are two major different user experiences. Microsoft will have to determine which search experience is the best and use that for both platforms.

From a real estate vertical, would the Yahoo / Microsoft deal be good for Business?

#1: Advertisers

Yahoo Real Estate pricing is much different than MSN real estate pricing. To post a property on Yahoo Real Estate will cost $34.95 for a basic listing. For Microsoft real estate, an advertiser currently can’t post a property. They would have to go to Move.com to do so and this is a CPC model. Will advertisers pay to be on both MSN and Yahoo separately or will they want a deal to be on both? Will advertises leave the arms of Microsoft and go towards the arms of Google?

#2: Yahoo employee morale

Working at Google and having various friends at Yahoo, I know many Yahooligans who are not too thrilled to have a new boss. Many Microsoft employees have left Microsoft to go to either Google or Yahoo. The thought of leaving a company you hated to then be sent back is not the best morale builder.

Will the real estate product managers have different thoughts on product search than the product managers at Microsoft?

From a real estate vertical level I see some issues with the Yahoo and Microsoft acquisition. If Microsoft and Yahoo can work through the issues with product integration, loss of key staff, and advertiser attrition than there may be some light at the end of this real estate tunnel.