Microsoft Wants To Own Yahoo
And in more ways than one. If you've been hiding under a rock this morning, you might not be aware of the fact that Microsoft is throwing a $44.6 BILLION dollar offer at Yahoo in hopes to acquire their search engine and all the benefits that go along with it, such as YSM (Yahoo! Search Marketing). Not to mention, with Yahoo in their pocket, Microsoft would now be an even more looming threat to the Google gods.
Besides the blow to the ego this must be for Yahoo, it's just another blow they've sustained since the recent downturn of the economy. Yahoo is reported to have said that they're going to lay off 7% of their work force (1,000 people). That spells trouble.
So why am I posting about this, you might wonder. Well, this will have a great impact on our beautiful little affiliate marketing industry. Now, instead of three big competitors and lots of little fish, there will be a big two.
While this might normally be good, I honestly doubt the battle will be between customer service departments (meaning, their customer service on both sides will still suck the big one). It will probably be some place on either platform that will annoy us all.
Of course, who knows, perhaps some good will come of this. Both services (Adwords and YSM) have no where to go but up in terms of interface, so maybe we'll see an improvement there. Still, I can't help but wonder where this will lead. Perhaps this will end up where everyone says it's going -- an all out war between Microsoft and Google. The rumored Google OS is a pending threat to the clunky Microsoft OS line and could strike a deadly blow to Gates's empire.
Maybe that's just what we need.
Popularity: 32% [?]
February 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 am
Somehow I am optimistic about this merge. I mean it will be bigger competition to Google so G and MSN/Y will have to compete more for our advertising money. And maybe after MS buys Yahoo their top engineers will work together to finally build an offline editor that even a college kid could make in C :)) I mean if your main business is advertising and you’re buying company for 44 billions dollars and can’t even make an offline editor that would explore your profits then nothing is gonna help you.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 am
Good points, but that’s idealistic. Most likely, they’re going to keep the interface the same and just start collecting advertising money to make the $44 billion back.
February 2nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Unfortunately I think you’re right about that
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
@Karolis: Well, not to mention Microsoft is coming out with Windows 7, which is more internet-centric. Microsoft acquires Yahoo, they acquire not only Panama (YSM) but also YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network). That’s a large advertising platform — essentially, a much bigger megaphone. That’s just one perk that will exponentially increase their sales and keep them at number one. Where o where is Google OS?