Microsoft today put a bid in for Yahoo!, which seems, and naturally so I suppose, has everyone excited, for good or bad reasons.
Apparently profits are down for Yahoo! and I guess Microsoft feel now is the time to strike, and gain so much. But what are they after here? What will they gain from this IF this is allowed to go through (I think there are clauses on fair competition about huge deals like this, which would have to be squared away first).
Microsoft have been aiming to get a big slice of the search engine pie for years, yes they have their own search but Yahoo! is well up the radar, of course not even close to the coverage of Google, nonetheless it is a huge player. But more importantly Yahoo! has a considerable user base, as an example I have a Yahoo! Messenger account, a Flickr account and I also have Yahoo! mail (albeit for my junk mail). I’m not in the minority either, I’m sure you probably have a connection somewhere too?
So, Microsoft would gain an even more enormous user base and essentially obtain serious channels into additional markets.
I’m not sure what all this will means yet but what has sparked my interest more that anything is the speed with which the “hot news” riffled around Twitter within minutes.
Microsoft to buy out Twitter? That would be a story too, exciting few days ahead I think.