According to his statement, Microsoft would love to become the owner of Yahoo Search. At present time, Microsoft in a distant third on the search market. The purchase of Yahoo (the number two player on the search market) won’t bring Microsoft anywhere near Google’s market share, but it will certainly strengthen its position.
Up till now, Microsoft tried many strategies to move up in the search race, but all its initiatives ended up more or less in failure. Costly acquisitions, expensive rebranding campaigns (Windows Live, anyone) and many other side projects simply did not deliver the expected results and Microsoft is still at the starting point in terms of advancement.
Perhaps the only plan that managed to convince more people to use Microsoft’s search engine was the Live Cashback program, launched in May 2008. You may recall, its the same Microsoft project that started acting really weird on Black Friday.