Google' suckered Yahoo badly in Google-Yahoo exit terms

Yahoo deserves a seat in the Sucker Hall of Shame for how badly it has bungled its strategic options over the last year.

• Reuters reports that "Google may scrap Yahoo deal" and reported that ""Yahoo wants the deal and they are willing to have Google sign anything at the Justice Department to have them do it," said the source."  

In strategically choosing to go with an ad agreement with Google over a search deal with Microsoft, Yahoo bet the farm that the Google-Yahoo ad agreement could pass muster with the DOJ. oops!

• To make matters worse, Yahoo negotiated a one-sided desperate ad agreement with Google.
• They gave Google a poison pill of $250m if Yahoo were bought by another entity, (i.e. Microsoft), yet they did not protect their own interests by holding Google to a more standard firmer committment to do everything necessary to consumate a Google-Yahoo deal -- like fight for it in court. 
• It will soon be apparent that Yahoo's lawyers and executives did not protect themselves very well legally. 

Yahoo's leadership should be panicked now realizing that they were suckered badly by Google.

• Not only did Google help talk Yahoo into not taking the bird in hand (the Microsoft search offer), but Google got Yahoo to buy into the rosy and unrealistic judgment that the ad agreement would get DOJ approval.
• In other words, Google kept Yahoo and Microsoft from combining forces to better compete with Google for four months, and Google effectively put Yahoo on competitive ice for another five months waiting for DOJ approval. 
• Meanwhile, in that nine months, Google has zoomed ahead competitively, as Yahoo was more focused on sucking up to Google than competing with Google.

Bottom line:

When the dust settles from the Google-Yahoo deal not going forward, it will be clear that competitively Google won and Yahoo got suckered. 

• Google is much farther ahead of Yahoo and Microsoft competitively than they would be if Google had not intervened and manipulated the outcome.
• And Yahoo will emerge permanently crippled and a shadow of its former competitive self.

Google suckered Yahoo badly.