YaMSN? MSNhoo? Oohaymsn?

Microsoft is betting $44.6 billion dollars that the death grip that G@@GLE has clasped over the neck of the search engine marketing can be loosened.

Search Insider » Blog Archive » MS-Yahoo Will Be Good For Users, Marketers, And Online Ad Ecosystem
Yahoo and Microsoft, through their various acquisitions of firms such as Right Media, aQuantive (DrivePM) and Blue Lithium, boast the ability to provide a powerful and extensible ad network. Each is already serving ads to external high-traffic sites (Microsoft to Facebook, Yahoo to eBay); integrating these properties will allow a combined entity to finally build an ad network capable of directly confronting Google Adsense.

I want an equal search engine marketing universe, where the excesses of one search engine are countered by market forces. Where link love or passing page rank is not some big bugaboo that we use to scare children. Please, Jesus.