Last week the search & stock news sources were buzzing with reports that Micorosft was interested in taking over Yahoo via an acquisition or strategic partnership.
According to DowJones’ MarketWatch (maybe soon to be Fox Marketwatch) and the Wall Street Journal (maybe soon to be the 21 Jump Street Journal), that although the two companies have had talks over the past two months about a merger, those talks are not currently active.
Microsoft and Yahoo, however, may still look into other forms of ‘cooperation’, in an effort to form some sort of joint venture to compete with Google.
Working together again in the search advertising field, to combine the forces of MSN adCenter and Yahoo Panama, would be one powerful way of doing so via forming a search marketing solution which would rival Google AdWords in usability and challenge Google in reach; atleast web search reach.
Could see this one coming… although less choice for advertisers is never a good thing.
Additionally, in terms of web search reach, Google accounts for close to 80% of organic click-throughs in many markets. Perhaps an acquisition of Google would work better ;)