Live Blogging Microsoft’s Bid For Yahoo Call

The Microsoft conference call on the Yahoo bid is happening now. I’ll live blog rough notes. Greg Sterling will do a formal write-up later. Steve Ballmer Had conversations over past 18 months. Called Jerry Yang to discuss yesterday Kevin Johnson Online advertising is growing Scale economics helps Technology matters in the space Because of both, […]

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Microsoft Yahoo

The Microsoft conference
call on the Yahoo bid is happening now
. I’ll live blog rough notes. Greg
Sterling will do a formal write-up later.

Steve Ballmer

  • Had conversations over past 18 months.
  • Called Jerry Yang to discuss yesterday

Kevin Johnson

  • Online advertising is growing
  • Scale economics helps
  • Technology matters in the space
  • Because of both, there’s consolidation
  • One player dominates (Google; he doesn’t say that)
  • Combining will give a more "credible" competitor
  • Combining talent pools, two search indexes, two ad platforms
  • Will enhance user experiences, innovation, better value for customers (see
    FTC, consumers win!)
  • Combining search and non-search in a single platform will improve
    revenues, make life easier for everyone
  • Pluses in eliminating redundant jobs and efforts, the fourth synergy in
    all this
  • Have a clear integration plan (can’t wait to hear it)
  • Based on success integrating aQuantive and TellMe (neither of which
    approach an integration of the size of Yahoo)

Ray
Ozzie

  • Portals led the way (think he said that, and if so, they didn’t)
  • Search becomes important
  • Search will grow past 10 blue links (thank Ask’s Jim Lanzone for
    popularizing this notion)
  • Natural language will come (yeah, right)
  • Yahoo has great community assets, combined with Microsoft productivity
    apps and devices, things will be great
  • So excited!

Chris
Liddell

  • Restates offer terms, says second half of 2008, hope to close
  • Real opportunity is long term values

Questions

  • To Ballmer, why this after aQuantive. No consumer face to that. No better
    way to increase scale and capacity than this.
     
  • Johnson reiterates that scale matters, you can ramp up ads if search,
    non-search, behavioral all on the same platform.
     
  • What makes this a more competitive offer than other potential media buyers
    that might be out there? Liddell: believe it’s an attractive one.
    Brad
    Smith
    says that since Google has 75 percent marketshare worldwide on paid
    search, they aren’t in a position to do this, anti-trust laws would prevent
    them.
     
  • How do you stop Yahoo from losing marketshare, asks analyst (dude, Yahoo
    isn’t — Microsoft is). Kevin comes back to combining engineering to be more
    efficient and drive core relevancy (which Yahoo is already competitive with in
    terms of Google, so that’s not a convincing answer).
     
  • Why not expand R&D rather than integrate two companies with different
    cultures? Is that risk accounted for. Ballmer — nothing like putting together
    two larger sophisticated R&D operations (or a nightmare). "It should be quite
    an accelerant." (or a hindrance, could go either way).
     
  • Hoping I’ll get to ask which brand will survive in search, which ad
    platform will make it, and more actual details on this plan. Damn, last
    question.
     
  • Ah, asked about existing brands. The Yahoo brand is a great brand. We love
    the Yahoo brand. They want to have clear integration principals and leaders
    from both company and lots of synergy (and corporate feel good talk). Ballmer:
    the Windows user wants to be live. There will be a Windows Live (’cause the
    demand has proven how much that’s been demanded so far, not). We have some
    thoughts… but a team from both companies would be best to assess that.

End of call.

Bottom line. There’s a plan Microsoft has in mind, but it sounds like
it has to be developed a lot more, especially when Microsoft itself says it
doesn’t have answers until it works with Yahoo. Frankly, this sounds far from an
easy win for Microsoft, especially after having now put Yahoo into play, there
are good arguments it could stay a strong company and not suffer brand
confusion. But there are compelling reason, obviously, why the two combined
would be the best challenger to Google.

For more on the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, also see our other coverage:

Also see discussion from across the web on

Blogrunner
and
Techmeme
.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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