Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Microsoft and Yahoo! Back in Talks

As reported by The Guardian, it looks as if Microsoft and Yahoo have been talking again about the possibilities for a commercial relationship. At the moment this appears to be strictly in relation to an advertising deal as opposed to any sort of acquisition attempts. Apparently the new Yahoo! CEO, Carol Bartz, has renewed last years negotiations, and held a number of meetings with Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, last week.

In the curent market, with Google's grip and reach expanding on a week to week basis, there must be a lot of pressure on the two companies to extend their own business activities. One option put out by The Guardian would see Yahoo taking over Microsoft's display advertising while Microsoft took control of all search advertising. Of course neither company has made any official comments on how they would do business with each other.

However, it's important to remember that it was only in February that Ballmer made a statement to Wall Street saying, "The fact of the matter is, these two guys [Microsoft and Yahoo] should somehow figure out how to get together and create more competition for this guy [Google]. And I'm hoping perhaps that that's a reasonable conversation to have with new management at Yahoo as Carol comes onboard."

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