It seems a safe bet that most of the money made by iPhone application developers will come in the form of advertising. That is the overwhelming lesson from the PC-based internet. So if Steve Jobs is right in saying that the marketplace for paid-for iPhone applications will eventually reach $1bn, how much bigger might the advertising market be?
Eric Schmidt was doing his level best late last week not to gloat. With Microsoft dropping its attempted takeover of Yahoo, the Google chief executive had just seen his arch-rival abandon its most direct attack yet on Google’s growing dominance of online search and advertising.
Jerry Yang must be starting to understand how Alfred Chuang of BEA Systems felt when Larry Ellison of Oracle came calling last year. Like Chuang, the Yahoo boss has just been landed with a takeover offer at such a big premium that he can’t possibly just ignore it. Also like Chuang, the options for other deals–or for staying independent–are shrinking fast. Here are the other partnerships or alliances that Yang could have grabbed at in the last year or so, and the chances that he can turn to them again now as he looks for an alternative to Microsoft …
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