White Hat Guys

The giant from Redmond has come calling at the doorstep of Yahoo and the whole world is talking. In a quiet move that took many by surprise late last week Microsoft announced it was trying to buy Yahoo for an incredible 46 billion dollars. Yahoo once the king of the internet hill was now the subject of a hostile takeover from the big boys of Microsoft.

Is this the end of the road for Yahoo? Are they about to be swallowed up and devoured by Microsoft in their attempt to fight off the growing Google Empire? Well don’t get too far in those thoughts my IM friends.

Now it appears that Google is or has made overtures of its own to Yahoo to form some sort of partnership, and they have dropped word of protesting the move by Microsoft on antitrust issues. Perhaps this move is being made in reaction to Microsoft or perhaps it was already in the works before the Microsoft announcement.

The bottom line here is that even though Yahoo has stumbled of late and its stock has fallen, layoffs have occurred and so on, it is still a giant company with a solid foundation. They are not going away. Now as to whether this would help or hurt the world of marketing on the web, I feel it would only help. If Microsoft and Yahoo have done a poor job of competing against Google in the online ad world then perhaps a merger or alliance would force them to do a better job. Let’s face it the Yahoo Publisher Network has never become strong. Microsoft’s PPC product is weak and difficult to use and does not produce results like Google for the active internet marketer. Plain speak.

So would the two companies lining up on the same side of the field make their products better? I have to think it would and that would be great for us in the IM world. Let’s face it we would all like to have alternatives in many facets of our business. That is why there are so many CPA networks popping up. It gives us alternatives and forces each to be better at what they do.

So if Yahoo and MS are on the same side perhaps they will finally come up with a solid alternative to Google and the market would grow.

Just a side note here. Don’t you think there is a novel or maybe even a movie script in this whole deal? Imagine secret nefarious dealings to own the internet marketing world. Maybe even secret agents of the internet world slinking around gathering secrets and rescuing the glam girls of the internet from a fate worse than death (no one reads their blogs anymore). It could be fun. Agent Geeks in suits and driving sports cars equipped with the deadliest smart phones on the planet.

I found this guy who even predicted it months ago.