Is Microsoft after Yahoo's paid-search patent?
Owen Thomas · 07/08/08 07:00PMYahoo's board has called Microsoft's on-and-off pursuit of their company "erratic." Not that their behavior's been that straightforward, either. But could there be more to the imbroglio than Jerry Yang's founder ego and Steve Ballmer's desperate grasping at relevance on the Web? Blogger Usman Latif has a theory: It's all about "'361," a patent Yahoo obtained when it bought paid-search pioneer Overture in July 2003. The patent covers the basic business model of letting advertisers bid to place ads against keywords — the heart of Google's multibillion-dollar revenue engine. Latif's thesis: Microsoft doesn't want Yahoo's people, products, or market share; it just wants to get its hands on this patent, so it can use it to knife Google.