• Search Engine Journal , Tuesday, May 20, 2008 3 PM

Loren Baker poses the question of whether Yahoo will be well-served to sell off its search business--and uses the growing success of AOL's Platform-A to illustrate why the answer may be yes.

"As Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are battling over who will acquire Facebook, who will buy part of Yahoo and who will compete with Google, an Internet giant is stocking its armory with some of the best and most integrated offerings to one day topple all three companies," Baker says.

That giant is AOL, and when you add up the ad network, social media and content plays that the company has made, the result is a formidable online advertising presence. "If anything, AOL reminds me very much of what Yahoo should be doing," he says.

And what AOL has done is hand paid and organic search (for the most part) over to Google so that it can focus on the broader online landscape. If Yahoo did the same, Baker argues that the company would be able to concentrate on a stronger revenue stream.

"Without the burden of search, Yahoo can actually focus on its potentially massive social network and then tap its userbase and reach to expand its content and display advertising deals," he says.

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