Will Microsoft’s Possible Takeover of Yahoo Affect Internet Marketing?
Besides the Super Bowl, the buzz this weekend was about Microsoft’s announcement that they want to takeover Yahoo in the biggest Internet deal since AOL and Time Warner merged.
How much money?
Microsoft made their unsolicited offer of 44.6 billion dollars, half stock and half cash, to purchase Yahoo. If the deal happens, the plan is to close by the second quarter of this year.
Internet Marketers are already considering the results of this possible takeover. As the online industry continues to grow and change, we will have to adapt to the changing marketplace if the takeover occurs because having two industry leaders instead of three is likely to have an impact.
Steve Balmer, CEO of Microsoft, states:
“This is a milestone for Microsoft’s online ventures — we believe in the benefits of combining these two companies now more than ever. We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market.”
As it stands, Google has a share of around 77 percent of the search market while Yahoo has 16 percent. Microsoft only has 3.7 percent of the search market and a merge with Yahoo would certainly give them a boost.
What would the takeover mean?
Well, it could potentially bring down pay per click costs as the two search engine giants go head to head. It could also result in some new online marketing tools as they try to out do each other, releasing new products, ways to market online, etc.
This is just speculation on my part of course.
But I personally think this takeover could be a good thing. I love Google and they’ve been very good to me — but a little healthy competition can sometimes bring out the best in a company.
Do you agree or disagree?
-Ryan
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Tags: Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo
I have a strange feeling about this, even if yahoo officially declines, i think things aren’t going to stop here.
On one side i see google, with their internet empire, shaping the face of internet — in another i see microsoft leading with desktop tecnologies…but in fact microsoft knows that they’re losing ground since most people rely on their platform to use google.
Then we see yahoo with a conservative approach drowning little by little.
I don’t think a google-yahoo join would be good, since it would make much the web look the same, but a microsoft-yahoo join would bring much fun to the “playground”.
Because microsoft can’t do the same that they’ve done to netscape, simply because its google — its goliath vs goliath.