SEO Blog

This world moves in strange and mysterious ways. TechCrunch is reporting that multiple sources at both Yahoo! and Microsoft are saying buy-out talks have resumed. To bolster that claim, shares of Yahoo! are up 7% since they opened this morning.

According to the TechCrunch report,

“What we’ve heard is that the two sides are in current discussions over a complete buyout, not necessarily that there’s a deal in place or even that Microsoft has made any kind of firm offer. Another source at Microsoft reiterates to us that they’re a buyer at the right price, but isn’t saying what that price is.”

Sources suggest the offer is well below the $33/share Microsoft originally offered. More details as they emerge.

This will never happen but:
Wouldn’t it be nice if the brightest brains at Yahoo! Search, Microsoft Live and whomever is left of Ask.com (who would be asked to leave voluntarily because nobody wants to muck about with big Barry-D anymore), merged to form a somewhat separate company?

It would be the greatest gift to the collective intellect if some sort of magic freed those incredible minds from the tyranny of the stupidity they toil under today. For what it’s worth (and that could be a great deal), Yahoo! and Microsoft could share ownership of the entity. They could entertain each other’s management trees with graphics and pie charts and innumerable high-power meetings; whatever… As long as they refrain from interfering with people who are clearly smarter than they are, the new joint entity can probably run itself.

As things stand today, something has to break.

There is no way Yahoo! is ever going to challenge Google for search market share. Nothing short of the Pope exposing Sergey or Larry (or both) as the Anti-Christ on steroids is going to change that. Last month, YouTube scored almost as many search queries as Yahoo!. They’re almost not even #2 anymore.

Pity the poor search marketing expert. The days are spent in meetings or lecturing in some strange city while the nights are sent sleeping off the excess of the evening before in some strange bed in a hotel room one really can’t afford but stays at anyway. That nervous twitch? Somehow one gets used to it. Many of us spend more time in the air than we do on actual roads. I’ve traveled many more miles in airplanes the past few years than I have in automobiles, trains, ferries or buses added together.
I am sitting in my parents’ backyard in the west end of Toronto. I am however working, not relaxing as I truly need to. The Search Engine Strategies Toronto 2008 conference ended 36-hours ago and my brain, body and soul are still reeling from exhaustion, elation, excitement and outright fear. Yes, you read that last word correctly, fear…

The tech and mainstream media have thoroughly denounced the two major announcements made by Yahoo! last week. The first announced a cessation of negotiations with Microsoft. The second announced an advertising distribution deal with Google.

From the outside, it appears Yahoo!, (in a stunning 24-hour period), radically devalued the portfolios of its shareholders and ceded a great deal of ground paid search to Google. 72-ish hours later, both statements still feel right. Instead of selling out to Microsoft and making everyone even richer, it looks like Yahoo!’s golden goose is going to die the death of a thousand tiny cutts cuts.

Michael Arrington started the ball rolling at TechCrunch Friday morning with the scathing, “Massive Destruction of Shareholder Value, Employee Moral and Internet Balance of Power“. As the hours passed and Arrington’s fingers warmed up, he took two more swipes at Yahoo! with, “Hey Microsoft, How ‘Bout that First Deal You Offered?” and, “NYTimes Article Reverberates Through Yahoo; Who’s their next CEO?“