The battle over Yahoo has been heating up! This report from Fortune Magazine indicates that Yahoo is in advanced talks with Time Warner to merge with AOL. In this deal Yahoo would also take on some cash and buy back some of their stock to prevent a Microsoft hostile take over.
The article additionally talks about Yahoo testing running Google ads...
"Yahoo is also looking at a possible advertising deal with Google (GOOG). Just hours before the news leaked of Yahoo’s advanced talks with AOL, the Internet portal announced that it would run a preliminary two-week test to run Google’s search advertising."
Wow, the various ways this deal might go down are mind boggling.
I think this industry would be a lot better if we had a stronger competitor to Google. A Yahoo / Microsoft merger, or even a Yahoo / AOL merger would be ok, but I don't think the market place looks good of all of Yahoo's traffic is monetized by Google ads. Sure this might simplify the ad buying process, but Google is a moving target, and I don't think we all want to be more beholden to one source of traffic and revenues.
Personally, I would like to see Yahoo and AOL merge, and then see Microsoft buy them, that would increase the traffic and make make an interesting ad buying opportunity and alternative to Google ads.
I like Yahoo's stance and hopefully they can fend of Microsoft. I would rather see 3 competent players in the online search/ advertising business.
I would rather see Microsoft and Yahoo try to acquire AOL, Ask, Digg, MySpace, and other major sites.
Google isn't unbeatable, they are not the killer app.
Posted by: Troy Duncan | Apr 10, 2008 at 10:23 AM
I agree. The worst scenario would be a GOOG/YHOO partnership or syndication deal. This would kill innovation and hurt advertisers bottom lines as GOOG would write all the rules of the game.
Posted by: Jeremy Palmer | Apr 10, 2008 at 12:25 PM