As Microsoft and News Corp. allegedly plot in the shadows on how best to form an acquisition strategy that will successfully bring Web pioneer Yahoo Inc. to its knees, Yahoo would appear to be covering itself in corporate honey to sweeten its value ahead of the seemingly inevitable absorption into the folds of Microsoft.
Google and Yahoo join in short-term ad-share deal. Credit: Google.
Specifically, Yahoo! Inc. and Google Inc., separately the world’s biggest search engine providers, have revealed a short-term deal that will see the online heavy hitters sharing advertising space.
Announced as a two-week experiment, the temporary deal will see Google ads appearing on around 3 percent of Yahoo’s returned search results, reports the BBC.
Analyst feedback on the deal has been to label it as little more than a well-timed corporate jig by Yahoo, executed to cajole American software titan Microsoft into improving its current acquisition offer of $44.6 billion USD.
Microsoft’s reaction to the Yahoo and Google ad-space deal has been to suggest that any long term agreement emanating from this initial trial period could be construed as an anti-competitive action.
“Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands,” commented Microsoft’s general counsel, Brad Smith. “This would make the market far less competitive.”
It is widely believed that Microsoft is eager to acquire Yahoo in order to haul back Google’s lead in the online advertising space, a driving motivation that Yahoo would appear to be exploiting for the sake of pushing beyond Microsoft’s present offer price.
Yahoo yesterday rejected a three-week deadline imposed by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, after which time the Redmond-based company has threatened Yahoo with the prospect of an aggressive boardroom takeover and a potential decrease in its financial evaluation of the business.
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