A lot has happened, or threatened to happen, since yesterday, surrounding Yahoo's potential merger(s) and its successful attempt to appear as the most-courted damsel on the Internet.
Here's a brief, bulleted rundown for all the list-lovers out there:
Google/Yahoo: Yahoo announced yesterday a temporary partnership with Google. This entails a two-week trial period during which Yahoo will carry Google AdSense ads. According to The Wall Street Journal, this is "part of a test that is designed to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader outsourcing arrangement." An arrangement, that is, which would destroy any idea of competition on the Web and drive regulators wild.
News Corp./Microsoft/Yahoo: The New York Times reported today that News Corp. may hop in bed (scandal!) with Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo. This ménage would create a combined monster out of Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN, and News Corps.' MySpace.
AOL/Yahoo: The Wall Street Journal reported today that, as some suspected, Yahoo and AOL "are closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations" in an attempt to thwart the Microsoft bid. Basically, through this partnership, Time Warner would fold its unwanted AOL into Yahoo through a cash investment. In return, it would own 20 percent of the new company. Interesting deal. But doesn't this kind of sound like selling your three-legged dog to a homeless guy? Just sayin'.
There's been some friendly banter taking place on the Internet Evolution message boards this week over whether or not Google is a monopoly at all, after our poll results declared it the "most dominant" monopoly of the current Internet age.
Regardless of your opinion on that (or mine, for that matter), one thing is for certain: Competition is never a bad thing, and a viable Google competitor could only benefit us citizens of the Web (Netizens, if you will).
By (a) teaming up with the sinking ship that is AOL; or (b) forming some sort of alliance with Google -- Yahoo is bailing on those of us who had hoped it would at least put up a good fight against Google in the ad/search space online, and perhaps give us another option for once on the Google-dominated Web.
But, in addition to Web users, Yahoo may be spiting itself as well. If it does reject Microsoft in favor of flirting with its other suitors, and those alliances take the company for a nosedive, Microsoft -- its only saving grace at that point -- could justifiably swoop in with a lower bid. And then, what's a girl to do?
People are needed to get things moving. Being a CEO myself, has me dealing with frustrations and innovations at the same time. Million dollar moves are just that.
Personally I do not think that Google should buy Yahoo or mege it. I think that Google is doing good ( if not very good) in web search and web ad domain.
The folks at Google would have to estimate the risk Microsoft + Yahoo poses to them.
And I do not think that this alliance would pose big risk to Google's "monopoly" in web space.
In any case, Google may not want Microsoft to buy Yahoo but it would not want to buy Yahoo ( My opinion)
Why all the love-fest between Google and Yahoo just after the Microsoft's bid? When i read your post i just start wondering if there is some hidden agenda unknowing to the majority of the public. Whilst the popular consensus is that Google is obstructing the deal, there are conspiracy theories making the rounds that both Google and Yahoo are up to something and it is: Google actually wants the deal to take place as it will benefits and Yahoo obviuosly wanted MSFT to increase the bid price. So this new friendship is to provoke MSFT to raise its bid:
I heard last year that the company was undergoing major
internal reorganization. Consequently, they are going through some shaky
times but, they still have an immense number of users that spans across the
globe.
Tim, I'm with you. This is all starting to feel very Jerry Springer-esque. I think Yahoo is currently in the process of making itself a few enemies both outside and inside its organization.
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The Memorial Day weekend begins with Geek Pride Day on Saturday. Kick off your holiday with nine news tidbits that are perfect for sharing at backyard BBQs and poolside get-togethers.
At the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Nashville, I'm hearing many stories about how businesses have adapted their IT strategies in response to this rapidly changing, pressurized, data-driven commercial world.
Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
MySpace is reinventing itself by focusing on content, but it's too late, and other social networks should learn from its example by looking toward a telco payment model if they want to sustain user commitment and their own revenue.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
Now that Bing has struck a deal with Twitter, its search service will have to process a tsunami of Tweets, many of which are worthless junk. Stefan Weitz, director with Bing Search, explains to Michael Singer how his service will make sense of the Twitter mayhem to provide relevant results to end users and enterprises.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
Bing, Microsoft’s search service, has struck a deal with Twitter. Here Stefan Weitz, director with Bing Search, talks through how the deal will work from a technical perspective, and what’s in it for users.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
Google's Knowledge Graph concept of returning the "right answer" might change the Internet if it becomes a common practice, but it could also contaminate the answers with commericalism or hurt Google's own business. Can they navigate these choices?
Yahoo's new CEO can't go back to what Yahoo was; that's how it got to what it is! Instead she has to look at something that Yahoo has always rejected, which is a relationship with the telcos and cablecos. They'd love a partner in creating service applications.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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