Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Gets Go-Ahead From EU, US DoJ
CWmike writes "Microsoft and Yahoo announced Thursday morning that the US DOJ and the European Commission have approved an agreement between the two firms to have the Bing search engine power Yahoo's sites. The companies said that engineers will begin adapting Bing for the Yahoo site 'in the coming days' and that they hope work is completed, at least the US, by the end of this year."
Google wanted to infuse Yahoo with money to keep them afloat with a search deal. It was immediately killed as an anti-trust violation, and they threatened Google with the possibility of breaking them up if they attempted something like that again.
So Microsoft infuses Yahoo with money in a search deal and it is approved.
I know Google has a larger market share than Yahoo, but which of the two companies has been anti-competitive in their business practices?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I would say they sell "search advertisements" as well as "syndicated web advertisement", "on demand video advertisement" and several other products. One could contrast these markets to "billboard advertisements", "tv advertisements" and "syndicated print advertisements".
Like it or not advertising is huge, and as such it makes sense to pay attention to these (relatively) smaller segments of the entire market for advertising services; especially when making decisions about the health of the market.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
you've been a big part of the internet for many people but as many partnerships like this in the past, you just don't walk away from a deal with Microsoft. It's like that giant slug thing in Stormship Troopers where they suck out your brain thinking it'll make them smarter. It doesn't work but it does kill you. It's been good to know you Yahoo and I hope Mr Icahn is happy knowing he handed you to Microsoft.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I love that a posting that starts out "I refuse to read" is marked up as being "informative." Oh, Slashdot! You make me smile a little.
Currently hooked on AMP
Seems like it will give MS more time to develop Bing by padding its' market share with Yahoo traffic.
One thing I'd really like to see is how many people who have switched from mostly using Google to mostly using Bing.
...besides throw-away e-mail accounts?
Seriously, the last time I used Yahoo search was in 1998. I remember because I had just started a new job and was trying to get the dumb bastards to remove ancient erroneous links in their directory (or whatever the fuck it was called) that were causing my new company big headaches. I did not succeed, but people stopped using that hideous thing and the problem went away.
Yahoo's motto at the time must have been "as dynamic as hard-set concrete".
I tried their search (powered by "Your Name Here") a few times and it sucked rocks. End of Yahoo for me. Even stale old Alta Vista was better. A few months later, Google arrived and I never looked back.
I did use the Swedish one, er .... oh, yeah, Alltheweb as a backup to Google for the first few Google years, but then Yahoo sucked Alltheweb (and others) it into its vacuum bag and turned them uniformly shitty.
IMO, association with Yahoo is the kiss of death for search engines. Lets hope it keeps its record intact. I think Google needs competition, but from someone innovative, not from the joint efforts of a couple of tired old whores.
Its sad to see yahoo going down like this. It really had some excellent services and i will miss many of them. With the Google agreement they would have had a chance of surviving and even grow but now i give them at most a couple of years. Icahn must have some reverse Midas touch where things he gets involved in turns to shit.
HTTP/1.1 400
There are only three companies that I'd expect to ever surprise me with the markets they might potentially invade in the future: Walmart, Microsoft, and Google. I frankly would not be surprised if Walmart set their sights on the internet, nor if Google came out with their own phone service (emphasis on the service, I know they already have the Nexus). I can definitely also see Microsoft coming out with their own "smartphone".
I run a small-medium sized web site that targets K-12 teachers. We started out small with very targeted ads, advertising on Google with a budget of $10/day and started making decent sales. We were doing so well that we decided to try Yahoo. We used the exact same ads and the exact same keywords as the ones for Google that were doing well. We put $100 in our Yahoo ads account to start with, and burned through the whole amount in 4 days without a single sale. Needless to say, we turned it off immediately and have never tried it again. Now we are making many more sales from our Google ads. I don't see how Yahoo's search marketing can be so inefficient and terrible. BTW, we also tried MSN/Live search and it's been active for about a year with a $20/day budget. The amount of money we give Microsoft every month is about $5. In other words, Microsoft search has absolutely no volume at all.
My rights don't end where your feelings begin.