Search Marketing Blog
When Dinosaurs Dance . . . The Continuing Saga
By now, if you have electronic connectivity of any sort, you know that Yahoo! has formally rejected Micosoft’s unsolicited bid of almost $45 billion (presented on our blog several post ago). The Associated Press announced this morning in their article titled “Yahoo Says No to Microsoft Takeover Bid” that Yahoo! considers the offer to be “inadequate”, and that the online portal perceives that it can elicit a much higher bid from the largest software manufacturer on the planet.
The article went on to state the several analyst perceive this as an attempt by Yahoo! to get Microsoft to offer a solicitation in upwards of $40.00 a share for the company. This would be almost a 30 percent premium to the current bid from Bill’s software shop.
The intriguing part of this courtship dance to me is that, while the board of directors at both companies focus on a union designed to maximize shareholder value, Google continues to strengthen its strangle-hold on its top position in the online search industry. As shown in the chart on our Search Engine Market Share page in our Resource section on this site, Google commanded more than 56% of total U.S. searches in December 2007, compared to Yahoo!’s 17.7% and Microsoft’s 13.8%.
I realize that a combined Microhoo! would capture a little more than half the number of searches that Google is currently generating in the United States. However, the operative component of that statement is “a little more than half”. Even combined, that’s a long road to travel. Let me know if you think getting half way there will enable Microsoft to catch-up to Google in the long run.
