Healthy competition between media owners and communications suppliers is a good thing and should be encouraged. Competition keeps products healthy, prices fair and consumers happy. But I’m not sure a Microsoft/Yahoo! search merger is sufficient to create any notable or lasting impact on the current structure of search marketing.

The problem is that Google is the giant in search - especially here in the UK where it has an 81% market share. That leaves Microsoft, Yahoo! and some others carving up the remaining 19%. The problem with these percentages is that they are real peoples’ behavioural preferences. Changes in industry structure and product ownership will not necessarily change consumer behaviour.

History tells us that dominant brand positions can be very difficult, if not impossible to dislodge. In fact category leaders are not dislodged; categories are dislodged. We can use transport examples to illustrate the point. The leading stagecoach companies gave way to the leading railway companies who in turn gave way to the leading car companies. But the leading stagecoach company didn’t become a leading car company. New entrants created and dominated new travel categories.

So change may not come until someone new invents search 3.0 or even search 4.0. or Web 5.0 - or ‘Somethingtotallynew 1.0′. And that will happen, just as the behemoth Microsoft once looked like it would never lose its dominance, so too will Google one day be eclipsed. But in the meantime, Microsoft and Yahoo! will be hard pushed to displace Google when it comes to search.