I wrote the comment to this article:

While I am concerned about the monopoly drawback too, I think your article lacks the point of view from "actual quality of service" for consumers.

I know, as an industry insider, that Japanese search engine people (both G and Y) have been investing so much time, effort and money for R&D in Japanese language search, and as you know, it takes a lot of market knowledge and tweeking effort to perfect the search technology.

On the other hand, Microsoft has not been doing their homework to catch up with them in Japan. Even in their core business, their Office products Japanese language handling is getting worse every minute. I don't use MS Kanji translation software anymore; I use Google's. I hear that they have moved their R&D to China, and even MS Japan employees don't use their Kanji software. The fact that they have minuscule market share in search is not a coincident. Their product quality is simply BAD.

Given that market reality, I can agree with Yahoo Japan's decision, which was probably the only way to keep their Japanese customers happy, and Japanese authority probably share my sentiment as well.