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Yahoo is still the daddy!
[washingtonpost.com...]
Scroll down and you will see stories from a variety of major newspapers with their differing and interesting views on this aquisition.
The deal -- one of the biggest Internet takeovers of the year -- was made possible by Yahoo's recently rising stock price
They seem to forget that Yahoo teed up $750 million in convertible bonds earlier this year - the article is missing some details, I'm afraid. The deal was made possible by those bonds, as well.
$2 billion by the end of this year? Well, sure - trackable revenue might surpass that, but afaik, there is no counter on "SEO revenue" :) who knows how big that is?
( the 2 billion was from Piper Jaffry NOT the article - they just used it to make the market sound lucrative ).
btw...what up with all this worry about MSN being "too late" catch-up or get in the market on their own? There is no such thing with MS. If they can't "buy it" then they just "outlast it".
It is well published that MS doesn't worry about such things. MS just enters a market, makes an initial "stab"....and then just keeps going and going and going until the competition bleeds themselves dry. End quote.
...And then they don't ever look back. Its the energizer bunny on steriods with $40 in cash.
Think: Palm, Netscape, Playstation, WordPerfect......
heck anything.
Also, Palm is far from troubles too. PocketPCs suffer from the same problem as XBox in that market: All the good software is available for the competition, not MS.
Even the desktop OS battle is losing ground, though they still have a huge share. Articles everyday abound with tales of Linux and other Unix variants gaining ground and supporters. Apple is never going away either, now that they too are a Unix variant.
Netscape themselves were just cut loose from AOL, but they aren't dead. In fact, they are just back to their open source roots now, a movement that has even Ballmer stammering at every conference about it's "dangers" (dangers to MS market share that is.)
eg:
I worked in Palm industry and love Palm...but its just a simple truth that MS now has a solid foundation in the market. Yet MS started light years behind.
Playstation thing has barely started...its doing better in other markets and MS will keep at it until forever. They want a platform to own your living room...XBOX is the stepping stone.
No one would say MS was first in the browser game, and no would say that IE is not the most used browswer now. End story.
Wordperf--what?
Who said MAC was going anywhere? It can stay at its 5% market share and in schools forever for all MS cares. No international corporatation I know is going mac anytime soon.
Linux may take some MS OS market share away...but um...so? Were they first?
The point is MS can enter the SE market late or super super late late squared and still do well....or be a thorn in the side of Yahoo and Google forever (which has its own ends as well).
Bleed, die or buy. Whichever way...I don't think anyone at Yahoo or Google is naive enough belive that MS can be ignored just cause they were first.
As i said before im very disappointed in the SE market now, i liked the thought any se had the potential to domainate.
Its sad to see the se's go from google,yahoo,msn,altavista, inktomi, alltheweb and overture. to just the first 3,
I believe reduced competition means usually a price increase in adverts :(
Inktomi I see benefiting everyone if it is folded into Yahoo's service and the directory goes bye bye. I like Inktomi's paid inclusion system better with it's auto updating, easy optimization and the availability of XML feeds for larger sites. The Yahoo directory is just a big expensive backlink at this point.
In reality, the two moves serve Yahoo very well in forcing MSN to either a) produce revenue directly for Yahoo via Overture and Inktomi listings in their current results, or b) spend money and effort to start anew. Either way it was a very nice strategy by Yahoo.
There's a lesson to be learned there, that business strategies that work in one of your stronger markets (OSes, browsers) does not exactly translate over to other weaker markets (Search, Console Games.) After all, you have to have the stranglehold first to put the squeeze on.
Comparing relevancy of search results, I think that Yahoo finally will use FAST technology for its own search result and both Altavista and Inktomi will be dropped.
As consequences, all important search services will maintain their own PPC module: Yahoo/Overture, Google/Adwords, MSN/"Pay for MSN".
I don't think that pay per inclusion is actually a working business model. Additionally, all of them (Inktomi, AllTheWeb and Altavista) are offering a similar feature.
Interesting will be the movements of MSN. Considering the usual strategy of Microsoft, there will be soon a Server Operating System with an index service that connects with search index of MSN, allowing the "fruitful" connection of server operating system with commercial success by online presence.
E-commerce operator will have to use Windows server in order to get best out of advertising in the Windows user world. MSN may be indexed documents on Windows servers and "Pay for MSN" the option to push the position.
I think that Altavista will be the first to go (if any). I am not sure that the brand carries any weight any more.
Microsoft has no plans to put a dent in its $49 billion in cash and short-term investments -- up $10 billion from a year earlier -- with any big acquisitions or an increase in its dividend, Connors said.
[biz.yahoo.com...]
I think it's important that a few options are available so a search marketing strategy can be customized for each site and its audience.
