Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?
from the seriously? dept
Over the weekend, reports quickly came out that Yahoo's board had apparently decided to reject Microsoft's takeover bid, which wasn't too surprising, given what the company had been hinting at all week. There was plenty of talk about looking for other suitors, but one by one, the few obvious candidates all backed away. Then, late Sunday a new rumor arose: Yahoo! might try to keep Microsoft away by merging with AOL. That seems sort of like trying to keep a wild animal from eating you by covering yourself with feces. It might make awful sense for about a second, but it's just a bad, bad idea. First, it's unlikely to work -- and, second, it's just pathetic. As much as it seemed like Microsoft merging its web operations with Yahoo would be two also-rans pretending a merger would somehow make them into a web operation people cared about, merging with AOL would be even worse. Of course, the folks over at Google must be laughing hysterically at the possibility. Not only would an AOL/Yahoo merger appear to be less of a competitive worry than a Yahoo/Microsoft merger, Google might actually make out quite well in the deal, since it owns a piece of AOL. So, in the unlikely chance that Yahoo merges with AOL and fends off Microsoft, Google would cash out of AOL, watch Yahoo struggle to merge with AOL and see Microsoft left without a big internet partner. That has to be Google's dream scenario.
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Filed Under: desperation, mergers
Companies: aol, google, microsoft, time warner, yahoo
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Beautiful. Just......Beautiful!
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Conglomo, anyone?
Lol...
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AOL in worse shape
If anything maybe Microsoft should buy AOL cheap and at least gain some dial up customers and work to improve web 2.0
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Funniest and truest article ever
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Re: Funniest and truest article ever
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AOL and Yahoo Merge
Yaolhoooo! (imagine that annoying yahoo sound with the ooo's on the end, like that))
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Wow
Merging with AOL would be like setting your car on fire in order to make sure no one's going to steal it.
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Re: Wow
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A sad (but necessary) parting
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Re: A sad (but necessary) parting
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Re: A sad (but necessary) parting
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Come on now- Google is building a wireless network for crying out loud. Internet on the computer will be "So 2006".
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Re:
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Hmmmm...
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/02/11/afx4639285.html
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Some tips for Yahoo
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Not that anyone would remember me....
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Re: Not that anyone would remember me....
I miss those days when the 'net felt like the wild west.
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Yeech
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071221/010141.shtml
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Yay!!!
I don't think I've used Yahoo since, except for Yahoo Finance which is a pretty informative site. I don't think I ever used AOL, except to use the free trial, then call and complain at the end and get them to extend it... then cancel for real before ever having to pay for it.
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the 5% google owns in AOL is likely enough to control it.
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My second correction of a
How an AOL merger helps Yahoo!...
1) Yahoo! maintains its position as the top site on the web. Quantcast shows that adding AOL’s visitors to Yahoo!’s puts Yahoo! at almost 200 million monthly uniques, almost 50% ahead of Google. ComScore data is less exact, since it groups AOL under “Time Warner Network”, but still shows the same trend:
- http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1
- http://www.comscore.com/press/.....press=2000
2) Yahoo! becomes the dominant player in IM. Yahoo! Messenger is already interoperable with Windows Live Messenger; adding interoperability with AIM means that they control ~70% of desktop IM client market share(more recent numbers on this are needed, but by the end of 2006 AIM was ~50 million, and both Yahoo! and Microsoft’s were ~20 million), and their clients can talk to everyone else’s. Yahoo! and AOL have both made progress in integrating IM with E-mail, something Microsoft still hasn’t done. As Yahoo! expands its e-mail services into enterprise markets, and enterprises increase their usage of IM, this could be a big deal.
3) Much better integration potential than with Microsoft. After being stuck in Time Warner’s in-fighting old media bureaucracy for so long, I’d imagine that AOL employees would be overjoyed to be brought into an organization that understands and is about the web. There’s also excellent potential for brand integration here:
- Yahoo! is a brand AOL users would be comfortable with.
- It’s a brand that it makes sense for AOL to adopt as it’s been expanding overseas operations(where Yahoo! already has a strong presence).
- The Yahoo! brand offers a graceful way to retire a brand that the tech-savvy have long scorned.
- Go to Yahoo.com, then go to AOL.com. The portals are almost identical. It’s feasible that a full-scale integration of the two properties could at some point take place.
4) There are plenty of other reasons why an AOL/Yahoo! merger has potential. Concentration of content-provider partnerships, joint efforts in mobile services/advertising, online/offline music offerings, and the fact that both are much more youth-friendly brands than MSN or Google. Plus more.
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Re: My second correction of a
Come on, man, what fun is that? :-)
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Re: My second correction of a
This assumes, I suspect erroneously, that there is zero overlap between the set of people who visit AOL and Yahoo!...
I think it's far more likely that both sites have a very high proportion of surfers with the "Portal mentality", and thus combining their userbases will leave them with not much more than the larger of the initial two userbases.
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Re: Re: My second correction of a
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Whats wrong with AOL
If they merge with AOL, they will control IM in the US, Advertising (advertising.com), finance (AOL was highest in Dec ) and even Mail - AOL mail was crap, now its usable and adding nice features!
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Alternatively, this is a good way for Google to have some say in Yahoo! while avoiding anti-trust concerns.
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I would like to see Yahoo! taken over by AOL...would, most likely, be the end for two dying dogs. Both are a haven for predators -- at least according to the volume of media coverage regarding both as opposed to similar sites -- they should get along nicely.
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Yahoo Now Thinks AOL Will Be A Savior?
Fixing Yahoo should not be too difficult. Cut down on your workforce. Improve service. Advertise more and your problems will be over. Yahoo's search engine is much better than that of the Gorilla monster because it indexes and ranks the website correctly. Unfortunately, most people don't use it in searching. This is the major problem. This can be changed by focused massive advertising.
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AOL
But comparing them to feces ? Come-on, they aren't that bad.
They do offer some compelling services, completely free of charge, and they are actively trying to improve those services all the time.
And they still have lots and lots of users.
I wouldn't pay for it, but I don't pay for Google or yahoo either.
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the h bomb
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