Report: Yahoo, Microsoft finally near deal

It's unclear whether they brought the requested "boatloads of money," but several top Microsoft executives are in Silicon Valley to try to finalize a search deal with Yahoo, according to an All Things Digital report late on Thursday.

According to the report, the two sides are "down to the short strokes" after years of excruciatingly well publicized on-again, off-again talks. A deal could come within a week, All Things Digital said.

Included in the Microsoft entourage, according to the report, are three of its top online executives: Yusuf Mehdi, Satya Nadella, and Qi Lu.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in May that she was open to a search deal if she believed in the partner's technology and they provided said boatloads of money. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has indicated for more than a year now that he would like to strike some sort of search deal, although he no longer wants to acquire all of Yahoo as the company offered to do in February 2008.

With Microsoft's Bing getting some good reviews and Microsoft having billions in cash on hand, the ingredients would seem to be in place, if both sides have the will to make it happen.

[javonyc]

i think the deal will be that yahoo search will be called bing.
and bings market share will grow fast

[Zer0Wolf]

<Applause!!!>

[JimmyMathews]

I like seeing Microsoft and Google "competing".
We need that way more than just having one huge giant dominating any specific area.

<a href="http://www.yourexback.org/about">Jimmy</a>

[Seaspray0]

There are features I like from both and there is no rule that says I can't use both.

[davidmcelroy_dotmac]

At this point, what does Microsoft need Yahoo's search business for? Just for market share? Assuming that they'd move everything over to the Bing brand and use their own technology, aren't they basically just talking about paying a ton of money for the No. 2 competitor in the market to just "go away" and put the Bing search brand on all of Yahoo's other properties? Or would Microsoft get something else out of the deal that I'm overlooking?

[flickrz]

It is important for microsoft to gain the scale in search market to make more money. this deal would give them scale i.e. greater incentive for marketers to bid on keywords on bing. In turn, their revenue per click for sponsored results (ads) would increase.

[Super2online]

flickrz, I couldn't of said it better myself. It's a critical component of drawing customers in.

[dhavleak]

@ davidmcelroy_dotmac, flickrz, Super2online

It's not just for revenue purposes -- it's also for getting better results.

Search engines also use clicks to determine what search results users actually find relevant. It's sort of a "feedback mechanism" feeding data back into your ranking algorithm. At the moment Bing is at a tremendous disadvantage purely because of it's 8% search share compared with Google's 64% share.

[globalist_agenda]

Having only two companies controlling a market screams oligarchy. We may as well be living in Russia.

[wolivere]

Republicans and Democrats

[jmurray_mi]

"Republicans and Democrats"

Funniest comment this month

[Super2online]

While Bing and Google may be the only large players, lets not dilute ourselves into thinking that they are the only players. There are many other players out there that serve thousands of happy customers.

[Seaspray0]

@wolivere. <applause>

[Marauder62]

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

[eltoro2827]

Down with google!!!!!

[AppleSuxLeo]

F Google. They are the new face of EVIL.
Woot ! Time to celebrate.

[d4nowar]

Say what you want, but google seems like a much better place to work at. Like the fabled "nirvana co." from Dilbert.

[t8]

Success isn't evil. Abuse is.
Google is successful.
Google isn't abusive.
Microsoft is successful and abusive.

Success doesn't always lead to abuse.

[CrashPad63]

Google is evil, They are very clever about it, but they are evil.
Do no evil,pshhh remember the book copying program??? That much literature in one vault is literally insane.
Let us not forget absolute power corupts absolutely.

[Super2online]

t8, you only have to look to toward the political relm to know that success begets power, which entices abuse.

[Seaspray0]

What is it with people hating monopolies? Monopolies got that way because they did a good job and people supported it. Just because they now control over 50% market share you want to scream, "Sorry. You're doing a great job and alot of people like you, but we want you to die because you're now too big." It doesn't work that way. Monopolies must, by law, operate under a different set of rules which prevents them from abusing that power. They are only evil when they break those laws.

[monkeyfun14]

@t8

Google would sell your medical information for a ad click.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Use BING ! And put a BIG DING , in Google.

[t8]

No.

[holyreki]

I've made the switch and I'm pretty happy so far. The only search catagory that Bing reallys needs to work on is news search.

[ddesy]

When Bing becomes useful for technical searches, maybe I'll consider using it. Right now it is nearly useless as far as I'm concerned.

[Michael_Martinez]

A merger of search technologies would be disastrous for both companies but AllThingsD makes it sound like Microsoft and Yahoo! are only discussing a merger of advertising networks. Shared advertising might work, especially as many merchants have recently begun increasing their advertising spend with Microsoft's Bing.

Nonetheless, both Microsoft and Yahoo! would gain more if they went their separate ways. Ultimately, one of these two brands is going to pay a high price for trying to gang up on Google. Yahoo! should have done what Microsoft is doing: improve its technology and take Google on directly. Yahoo! has the technical resources to do that but their management has squandered those resources on useless priorities.

[Super2online]

"Had" the technical resources is more appropriate. Their talent is leaving in droves!

[a_flores]

Last week I was using Yahoo Search engine to look for some picture to learn Liquify in Photoshop. I was searching "chubby girl" in Google and came to my disappoitnment. Then i went to Yahoo. Oh my God, searching for "chubby girl" and so many explicit and vulgar porn pics came out in Yahoo thumbnails. I then turn my search into Bing. All failed to satisfy me. I then turn my search to Flickr and Webshots. I got what I want in Flickr. Xie xie, thank you.

[empirestatebuddy]

Could striking a deal with AOL search be next...?

[Super2online]

Start bringing in the advertising dollars in a much bigger way and all is possible.

[Tod Smith]

Bing is good!

[t8]

Thank you shill.

Please come to one Microsoft Way and pick up your pay check.

[naterandrews]

Bing is a rehash of everything they've been doing for years. Cashback, image search, maps and local.. all the same thing, just rebranded. Yes, Bing is a "new" kind of monster, it's a Decision Engine! (More like a shopping engine..), but what really has changed under the hood from it's endless string of predecessors?

*"Bing is more relevant than before"
(Shouldn't a product progressively get better? Why reward what is already expected??)

*"Bing organizes results better than before"
(Changing your algorithm to display things a bit differently, nice. Revolutionary? Not so much)

Bing cannot fix what is broken. Sure, a lot of Live and MSN search users will be wowed (I mean, seriously, not too hard to become wowed from what they had prior to Bing). But Google and Yahoo! users are obviously getting decent results and aren't too terribly unhappy with how data is being presented to them. Bing offers nothing substantially new to the table, Bing doesn't solve any existing problems (rather, it ATTEMPTS to create search discord out of thin air).

Let Microsoft push their "Decision Engine". If I want to shop for a plane ticket, vacation, car rental or a new restaurant- I'll be sure to defer to their wisdom of convoluted Decision making. Otherwise, I'm happy with what I've got.

[Super2online]

naterandrews, you must be evaluating with a closed mind, as millions of people have already voted by changing their search habits.

[ddesy]

Super2online,

Plenty of people who have tried Bing have also voted by not changing to it. Doesn't that mean something as well? It doesn't work well for everyone or everything.

[Super2online]

ddesy, in my opinion it means that many will need more convincing. Steve has said this is just the beginning, that there is a whole lot more coming. If the intial release is any indicator of what's coming, then I would expect that many more in the future will make the switch.

[t8]

Super2online

You know Steve on a first name basis?
Not surprised. There are heaps of Microsoft shills in these forums these days.

Microsoft is desperate. They have an army of shills hitting forums promoting Bung.

[renGek]

12 months ago the market would have cared. Its a non event now. The fact that it took this long and this much of a shake up in yahoo to get this done shows how slow and how wall street mentality now controls yahoo rather than innovation. A once great company with potential reduced to a bunch of business folks with no tech sensibilities running the company like it makes toasters rather than web products.

[naterandrews]

While this isn't exactly new news, I just think it's hilarious that Microsoft can complain about a possible Yahoo and Google deal ("Google will be too strong" yadda yadda..), but in turn are eager to turn around and do the same, therein making it a two horse race.. got to love Microsofts' backwards business methods...

I'd love to see if this ill fated deal even passes regulatory approval. Come on Diller (IAC/Ask.com), Bezos (Amazon/A9) and Schmidt (Google)- join together to cry foul on Microsoft's merger efforts. If Google can't partner with Yahoo!, why should Ballmer?? Come on Microsoft, cant you actually rely on ORGANIC growth for once? Guess not...

[t8]

Organic growth. Na.
Abusing the monopoly is easier and gains faster results.

Also, the US Justice doesn't have the balls to hand out a tough penalty for abusing the monopoly.
The only hurdle is the EU.

[Super2online]

naterandrews, your assessment illustrates your personal disdain for Microsoft, but does not provide a realistic approach for an objective evaluation. It was the government that stopped the Google/Yahoo deal because it would have created a monopoly, not Microsoft. No search engine in their right mind would of wanted that deal to go through. There has to be an effective competitor in the market today to bring a sense of urgency for improvement for any company. Until Bing came to the table, that urgency wasn't there for Google, hence the stagnation of their service to bring significant improvements to the table, and the call for an immediate meeting of Google minds by Sergie to evaluate the threat.

[monkeyfun14]

@t8

What abuse you keep talking about abuse but fail to point anything out.

[t8]

I think I have head of Bing. Isn't that some sort of Google Search knockoff?

[CrashPad63]

t8 is a rather poor comedic talent, suffering with ***** envy.

[Super2online]

t8, you can close your mind to the idea of competitors improving upon their services to the point of changing peoples perception of its significatly increased value and altering their search habits if you want to. But doing so just blinds you to the personal benefits you could be enjoying!

[Seaspray0]

His comments do tend to follow a pattern...<flame> <insult> Insert product name here <flame> <insult>. In his defense, I've seen much, much worse from others.

[ddesy]

Too bad t8 isn't too far off the mark, then, isn't it?

[t8]

Bing, the Zune of search.

[naterandrews]

Random food for thought-

If Microsoft succeeded in their buyout of Yahoo! for the original offer, do you think that the company would be weakened afterwards? Taking a heavy liquidity loss, while dealing with regulatory and government approval, and assimiliating all that Yahoo! technology would surely take it's toll on Microsoft. But would they be, in your opinion, slower to respond to Google's actions and treats, and slower to invest back into the company? Interesting food for thought!

[Super2online]

The changes to Bing have obviously been in progess to gather and create technologies that would significantly improve many aspects fo their service for quite some time. My guess is, your scenerio might have slowed it by a quarter or 6 months months but not prevented it from happening.

[Seaspray0]

If you compare yahoo stock price now to what the rejected offer price was... I'd say your random food for thought has substance.

[aterianus]

Can someone remind who Yahoo is again? In the current environment I don?t really see why Microsoft would bother, their new Bing project appears to be doing what they wanted and they are getting good reviews and market share without wasting cash on a dying enterprise. I say, Yahoo made their bed now let them sleep in it.

[thawkins2009]

Search engines are fundamentally broken as a concept, but there are very few viable alternative mechanisms available today. Search engines dont find information for you, they find pages that MAY have the information you want, you have to open each page up and scan it to see if its what you want. We have all just become conditioned to believing that that is the best that can be done. This statistical inverse permetative index is the the shotgun approach to information retrieval. Google, Yahoo, and MSN keep tweaking the algorithms, but its a crap way of finding data, and very time intensive. Its like walking into a store and having to open all the tins to see what you are buying, because your cant trust the lables on the outside to say what is inside the tin.

[ddesy]

Funny.... it usually doesn't take me much time at all to find what I need using Google. Those lines underneath the link are usually plenty to tell if a site has what you are looking for, and if you know how to use basic search features you can narrow things down quickly.

[NWLB]

Curiously, it seems like somebody at Microsoft is actually thinking these days. They are successfully moving clear of the Vista disaster, Windows 7 is getting generally high marks. They finally figured out they needed to stop using MSN this, MS Live that, and used the catchy "Bing" for their otherwise failed search engine move. And joke about the Yahoo move, but with Bing holding steady, if they could move fast enough, merge Yahoo's market into Bing, it would be a wise tactic.

Nope, in the end, I figure MS is still MS. But with Google in the hunt, the tech world is finally becoming a game again.

Meanwhile, Apple is still over-priced. They do play the part of spoiler in all of this. They are more like-minded to Google.

[johnwbaxter--2008]

I suppose it's possible that one or two of the cruise ships that pass my window each week could be heading to SFO from Seattle filled with money, rather than going to Alaska with the rest of the fleet.

Or could it be that the "boatloads of money" was a metaphor?

(And why is metaphor spelt with no trailing "e" when semaphore has one?)

[windooor7]

ITS not going to make a big deal. untill Microhoo changes how folks search stuff. people go to googles beacuse they cant find what they are looking for in msn. not beacuse its not there, but its how they bring it up.They require alot of accuracy. and that not good for millinons of folks that can read and write english well. They need to integrate microsoft word spell checker on search engine. it does not require lots of accuracy. you can type real bad on googles and its ask you did you mean to get this. and it works.

[aintnorainbowdorothy]

Hmm. Talking about people reading, writing, spelling, spelcheck, etc. Spellcheck is useless inasmuch should it not recognize a word it just allows you to put it in the dictionary. Grammar is worse inasmuch as there is no grammatical context,i.e. if a word is spelled correctly it won't correct bad grammar. Your nonsencical grammar and spelling is a good example. Google with a capital is the company, google without the capital is a term meaning the largest number, without actually showing the largest number. Learn to spell, use proper grammar and then retype your response.