I would be surprised if you missed this one – Microsoft has put a bid to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billon. That is big companies spending big bucks for big audiences and market share. I can see a good deal for Microsoft coming out of this, probably for Yahoo as well… the chase for the top (Google) is on… Now, is this good or not? It fells like a clone to the mergers on the “traditional” media side (TV, News etc) that has/is happening. The question is, has that given us more and better TV, news etc? Believe that this can also be argued quite expensively… Personally I have a split view on this – on one had, it is not good for a few big players to rule any space (this case – online media). Should have many strong playing at the same time (of course, the internet is a beautiful media that way, small players do have a lager chance to get heard. But these kind of large mergers do make it harder). On the other hand, it will most likely give us marketers greater tool and in general make more and greater services available quicker. As well as push the media forward. – So the jury is out on this, at least for me… Still a long way to go for Microsoft to have this go through, will follow this impartially for now… It does further plant (with a huge number), which is great, that online is a very important media and the place for the digital future…
Another fun (and somewhat interesting…) thing I noticed reading about all this was the creative logo development that is going on (see collage for an outtake)… It will be fun to see how the identity of both develops ;).
Some interesting reading can be found below:
Industry split on Microsoft’s $44B ad play
Yahoo! and the future of the Internet
Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Yahoo: Not As Bad As Some Think