I would definately like to see some competition with the big G. Don't get me wrong, they are an excellent company. But they really dominate the search engine industry.
I personally think Microsoft is a good company too. As for their software, I am not a big fan. I only run Windows because I have some games I love that only run on windows.
I have found that Y! and MSN search results don't have ***as much*** spam results as G. I personally like the fact that both Y! and MSN rank my sites well. Don't bite the hands that feed you.
True, Google does need some more competition in the search engine market, my only issue is that anywhere that Microsoft gets their foot in the door, they end up completely dominating that market. Google is a major force, but with Microsoft owning the OS market, they have a lot of sway...
Microsoft has enough monopoly as it is. I'd like to see some other major technology company like Sun or HP buy AOL and get involved as a new search engine... it would never happen, but it'd be nice...
AOL is tranforming itself from the old dial-up king into more of a portal. They still have a lot of users, and if there are users there are ads to sell. SE's are just trying to get every last customer they can. AOL is going to be the real winner in this bet, they looked like a dog, now the top web companies are salivating over them. Whoever gets AOL will have to pay more than it's worth.