Software giant Microsoft said Friday it had made an unsolicited offer to buy Internet search engine Yahoo with a cash and stock bid worth $44.6 billion. Now thats a good price for a company that has had a share loss of around 30 percent of their value in the past year( Earlier this week, Yahoo announced plans to lay off 1,000 employees by mid-February).
What do you guys think of the offer? Is it possible for these two companies to join forces to try and topple Google from its lucrative first spot on the web? I don’t know if that can happen as Google has been smart about everything they do. It seems they have a magic orb and see everything one step ahead of the competition.
I don’t see this happening with the government being involved. Monopoly comes to mind when i read this article.
The offer allows Yahoo shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock with the total purchase consisting of half cash and half stock.
Yahoo shares rose nearly 60 percent in pre-market trading on news of the approach, while Microsoft shares were down 2.6 percent, CNN Money reported.
The announcement comes with Microsoft and Yahoo seeking to compete with Google in the lucrative online advertising market, currently worth $40 billion and expected to grow to $80 billion within three years. “Google has been faster and smarter in realising what the Internet can do,” CNN International’s Financial Editor Todd Benjamin said. “Microsoft thinks Yahoo can help it leapfrog into this huge, huge market.” Read Todd Benjamin’s blog
Towards the tail end of PubCon, I noticed a spateofarticles talking about subdomains and subdirectories in Google, and I wanted to talk more about this subject in case I was unclear.
Historically, it’s been kind of a wash about when to use subdomains vs. subdirectories. Just as a reminder, in a URL such as subdomain.example.com/subdirectory/ , the subdomain is “subdomain” and the subdirectory is “subdirectory” (also sometimes called a folder).
If you throw your content into a subdirectory, usually the code is all in the same file storage space. That can make it much easier to find/edit/change code. It can also be easier to move code from one place to another. A subdomain, however, is often a domain name system (DNS) alias. Subdomains can be a little more difficult for a novice webmaster to set up, especially if words like “CNAME” don’t mean anything to you. Subdomains can be managed separately, which can be a joy (you can use DNS to decouple a subdomain if you want to migrate that part of your site) or a pain (it may be more of a hassle to juggle DNS setting instead of just using file commands to make or move directories). When I started my blog, I decided to use a subdirectory (mattcutts.com/blog/) just to keep things simple, for example.
For several years Google has used something called “host crowding,” which means that Google will show up to two results from each hostname/subdomain of a domain name. That approach works very well to show 1-2 results from a subdomain, but we did hear complaints that for some types of searches (e.g. esoteric or long-tail searches), Google could return a search page with lots of results all from one domain. In the last few weeks we changed our algorithms to make that less likely to happen in the future.
This change doesn’t apply across the board; if a particular domain is really relevant, we may still return several results from that domain. For example, with a search query like [ibm] the user probably likes/wants to see several results from ibm.com. Note that this is a pretty subtle change, and it doesn’t affect a majority of our queries. In fact, this change has been live for a couple weeks or so now and no one noticed. The only reason I talked about the subject at PubCon at all was because someone asked for my advice on subdomains vs. subdirectories.
My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.
If you own or work with a search engine optimization company, or
even if you’re just hoping to better your search engine
placement, then you are probably aware of the recent acquisition
frenzy that took hold among the major search engines. Google
paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, Microsoft paid $6 billion for
Aquantive, and Yahoo paid $680 million for the 80 percent of
Right Media that it did not already own and another $300 million
for BlueLithium. The companies purchased are all intended to
help widen the advertising range of each of the engines in
question, and to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated
behavioral-based ad-serving technologies that the acquired
companies owned.
What many people failed to realize was that when Google
purchased DoubleClick, it now was also the owner of a very large
search engine optimization company called Performics, which is a
wholly owned subsidiary of DoubleClick.
This fact is of course raising some eyebrows in the industry.
Google has consistently maintained that there is no way that
people can pay for better search engine placement in the organic
index, a stance that the company still claims applies despite
this recent purchase. In fact, a portion of Google’s published
guidelines about SEO says, “While Google doesn’t have
relationships with any SEOs and doesn’t offer
recommendations…” In another portion, Google says “While
Google never sells better ranking in our search results…”
However, anyone who hires search engine optimization company
Performics is of course now paying Google for better search
engine placement. It seems like a pretty black and white issue,
but Google would obviously prefer that it was kept delightfully
blurry.
A Serious Conflict of Interest
One would think that Google, aware of the controversy that would
come from the fact that it now owned a search engine optimization
company, would be eager to spin Performics off quickly in order
to avoid the appearance of impropriety and of selling search
engine placement. Not so, says the official Google/Doubleclick
acquisition FAQ:
Q. What will Google do with Performics?
A. Performics is part of DoubleClick, and we are acquiring
it as part of the transaction. We have no plans to dispose
of it at this time.[1]
All right, so Google owns a search engine optimization company
and seems prepared to hold onto it for a little while at least.
Yes, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest. Yes, there
appears to be a large double standard. Yes, Google appears to
have abandoned its long-standing principles regarding organic
search engine placement in the interests of profit. But surely,
the search engine optimization company that it bought will
quickly be forced to follow the guidelines that Google has
published for companies that are looking for a search engine
optimization company. Right? Well, no.
Here is a verbatim quote from the guidelines that Google
provides to people thinking about hiring a search engine
optimization company:
* Make sure you’re protected legally. For your own safety,
you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back
guarantee. Don’t be afraid to request a refund if you’re
unsatisfied for any reason…[2]
On the surface, this advice seems solid enough, but as an owner
of a search engine optimization company, I can tell you how
impractical it is. What would prevent a company that achieved
fantastic search engine placement using my service from asking
for its money back, claiming that it is unsatisfied? “For any
reason” is a very slippery slope, and apparently Google agrees
– Performics does not offer a guarantee of any kind. How do I
know? Simple — one of my employees called and asked. We also
have it in writing from an email we received from one of their
sales reps.
What Are Google’s Options?
Let’s be charitable and assume that in the heat of the
acquisition Google has forgotten to update the page of advice
that it has created for website owners. This leaves only four
things that can happen:
1. Status Quo: Google keeps this advice up on the page and
Performics continues to offer no guarantee regarding search
engine placement. We’ll call this the “hypocritical”
scenario.
2. Performics gets in line: Google leaves the advice up as is
and forces Performics to offer an unconditional money-back
guarantee. We’ll call this the “free SEO from Performics”
scenario.
3. Guidelines change: Performics maintains zero guarantees
for search engine placement but Google modifies the advice
to remove the inconsistencies pointed out in this article
from its advice section. We’ll call this the
“shareholder’s delight moneygrubber special” scenario.
4. Google spins off Performics and removes itself from the
search engine optimization industry. We’ll call this the
“sanity over dollars” scenario.
I’m not betting on which of these scenarios is most likely.
Some time back I would have picked #4, but as I pointed out in a
recent article, Google has already crossed an invisible line by
offering free advice about organic search engine placement to
its biggest pay-per-click spenders.
Google owning a search engine optimization company — a slippery
slope, indeed. What does this mean for those hiring other
companies and looking for great search engine placement? We will
just have to wait and see.
Posted under proxy building on November 16th, 2007 by gas money
well I’ve been in the proxy industry for some time now and as usual AdSense always fluctuates. I emailed Google a while back and asked them why my earnings have decreased and if i was smart priced. They responded with
“you haven’t been smart priced and the system is automated. It does the calculations on its own”
So my guess on why the earnings are decreasing is that since Google is changing the way the ads are being displayed , its really getting rid of a lot of accidental clicks with its new system. Hopefully this changes with time but one can only hope.
search engine Yahoo with a cash and stock bid worth $44.6 billion. Now thats a good price for a company that has had a share loss of around 30 percent of their value in the past year( Earlier this week, Yahoo announced plans to lay off 1,000 employees by mid-February). 
The only reason I talked about the subject at PubCon at all was because someone asked for my advice on subdomains vs. subdirectories.
