#2 and #3 trying to bolster up against #1?
As of this past December, Google led the market in online searches with 58% market share while #2 and #3, Yahoo! and MSN, respectively, held a 33% share. Thus, last Friday Microsoft revealed a deal to Yahoo! that CEO Steve Ballmer claims would make a stronger #2 to fight Google’s potential monopoly. The bid was made at $31/share or $44.6 billion (one of the biggest internet mergers to date, second only to AOL/Time Warner). At this point, there is also discussion that Yahoo! CEO Jeff Yang has been in contact with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, regarding a different agreement in which Yahoo would retain its indepedence (A Yahoo! / Google merger, however, would likely violate many of the antitrust laws) but share revenues with Google over search ads. Google executives are not hesitant to say that they like the status quo and may fear Microsoft becoming too strong.
As of right now, it seems unlikely that Yahoo! will accept this deal, but many are failing to comment other than to say that they are reviewing the offer and it might take a good deal of time.
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Tags: Anti-Trust, Google, Microsoft, MSN, Yahoo!