Partnering with Yahoo would have given them dominant market share in IM and Mail - which means more data to play with to beat Google out of the advertising/sear

Partnering with Yahoo would have given them dominant market share in IM and Mail - which means more data to play with to beat Google out of the advertising/search market. Advertising/search brings revenue, unlike Flash or Silverlight. I'm not sure why I'm not seeing it, but could someone expound on what "owning" Flash would even give MS, aside from bragging rights...