Search Marketing Blog
Baidu . . . Yet Another Reason for $45B from Microsoft
In our last blog post, we alerted you to Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo! for almost $45 billion. A study released last week by comScore, which revealed that the Chinese search engine Baidu.com is the third most popular search query source in the world, provides even more insight into why the Seattle software shop is eager to gobble-up the Yahooigans.
This report, which is cited in an article titled “{Eat Baidu’s Dust, Microsoft“ on The Motley Fool Web site, states that Microsoft is a distant fourth in rank of the world’s most popular search engines, behind Google at the top, Yahoo! in second position, and Baidu in third.
Here’s the breakdown of each search engine’s world-wide market share in December 2007 from this revealing report:
Google 62.5%
Yahoo! 12.8%
Baidu 5.2%
Microsoft 2.9%
All Others 16.7%
In addition to bringing to light the lagging position of Microsoft in the online search industry, The Motley Fool article goes on to state that, “Mr. Softy can’t even claim to be playing small ball profitably. The company’s online arm continues to lose money”. Given this fact, you can see why this $45 billion offer was made last week.
Interestingly enough, even if Microsoft does acquire Yahoo!, the current annual revenue at the Sunnyvale search engine represents only about ten percent of total revenue at Bill’s Place. Of course, some deals aren’t just about the money!
ArticlesGarage.com 02.04.2008 at 12:30 pm
I don’t believe the reason behind the Microsoft bid for Yahoo is Baidu. I believe this bid is more than a search engine used only in China right?
Also the numbers from the report are a bit weird in my opinion with Yahoo at only 12,8%
Sean McMahon 02.04.2008 at 1:48 pm
Thanks for your comment, ArticlesGarage. Please note that the percentages reported in The Motley Fool article referred to above are for the total ‘world-wide’ online searches in December 2007. The actual market share percentage of total US searches for Yahoo! in the same month is much higher, as shown on the Resources page of this EngineWorks site (Search Engine Market Share).
Whether you consider either the world-wide market share or the domestic number, it is evident that Microsoft would face a much steeper challenge attempting to catch-up to Google through organic growth. This can be seen in the following quote from Steve Ballmer this morning, “We are investing for success, and we think we have a chance to get farther sooner through the acquisition of Yahoo!,” Ballmer said.