Get Smart about Business Spending
- Related Stories
-
Microsoft's bold bid for Yahoo
February 1, 2008 - Related Blogs
-
Google's rise key to potential Microsoft-Yahoo merger
February 1, 2008 -
Ballmer's letter to Yahoo: We want you
February 1, 2008
Microsoft's bid for Yahoo would create one of the world's largest Web companies, when examined using several different metrics.
The target of the proposed acquisition, of course, is Google, which enjoys a healthy lead in the search market but trails the potential combination of Microsoft and Yahoo in several important categories. Here's a look at the tale of the tape.
| Microsoft-Yahoo deal in digits What does $45 billion mean to Microsoft? | |
| $59.09 billion | Combined fiscal 2007 revenue of Microsoft and Yahoo. Most of that revenue, of course, comes from Microsoft's twin strongholds of its Windows operating system and its Office productivity software suite. MSN, Microsoft's online efforts perhaps most akin to Yahoo and Google, did $2.4 billion in revenue for Microsoft's fiscal 2007, compared with Yahoo's $7 billion in revenue. Google's 2007 fiscal revenue was $16.59 billion. |
| 1.2 billion | Combined unique monthly visitors to Microsoft and Yahoo's Web sites worldwide, according to December stats from ComScore. Google is the current leader in monthly unique visitors, while Microsoft and Yahoo are second and third, respectively. The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo's wide variety of sites would theoretically make it the first billion-user Web property, though a lot of people who currently visit both sites would get lumped into the overall figure. Google's unique visitors in December totaled 588 million. |
| 31.5 | Combined U.S. search market share percentage for Microsoft and Yahoo. With 56.3 percent of the search market, according to December figures from Nielsen, Google would still have a very healthy lead in search queries, which comprise the launching pad for everything else that these Web properties are trying to accomplish. |
| 83.1 million | Combined U.S. e-mail market share for Microsoft and Yahoo as of September, according to Nielsen. They would have a huge advantage over Google here, as both companies have been providing free Web e-mail for years, before Google got into the game with Gmail (which has about 13.6 million users). Yahoo is currently far and away the e-mail leader, with 55.5 million unique users, and AOL is still very much in this game, with almost 30 million unique users. |
| 47 million | Combined unique U.S. instant-messaging service users for Microsoft and Yahoo, according to September figures from Nielsen. Again, no contest here. AOL is the market leader, with AIM and 39.8 million unique users, but a Microsoft-Yahoo blend would surpass AIM with room to spare. With just 2 million users, Google Talk is barely on the instant-messaging map, trailing the Big Three, as well as Meebo and Skype. |
| 15.6 | Combined percentage of U.S. Internet visits for Microsoft and Yahoo, as of January 26, according to Hitwise. Page views might be on the out as the end-all, be-all metric of Web properties, but they still count for something. And a combined Microsoft-Yahoo company would generate more than double the page views of Google's current operations, which grab 7.7 percent of U.S. Web page visits. |
| Sources: ComScore, Nielsen, Hitwise, company records | |
See more CNET content tagged:
Yahoo! Inc., ComScore, Google Inc., visitor, leader
You're right, of course, it's silly to ignore all those other places. But we've got to report hard numbers, and U.S. numbers are what those companies report.
You're right, of course, it's silly to ignore all those other places. But we've got to report hard numbers, and U.S. numbers are what those companies report.
Whoever created the chart doesn't understand these companies' business or online market metrics....
- This chart is full of errors
- by klimenkop February 2, 2008 11:25 PM PST
- Has anybody explained to whomever created this chart the notion of unique visitors and duplication? You cannot simply add unique users of Yahoo and MSN to get to a total combined number, because there's a tremendous amount of overlap where Yahoo users also go to MSN, and visa versa. The combined unique visitors of two sites will be more like 600MM uniques, not 1.2B!! There are 1.2B people online in the entire world.... Same applies for your cals of mail/IM combination. Also, in order to compare apples to apples, you need to count Yahoo and Google total revenue excluding partner commissions, so the revenue numbers are $5.1B and $11.7B, respectively. (Not $7B and $17B).
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- Not to mention...
- by TV James February 4, 2008 10:28 AM PST
- Yahoo!'s and Microsoft's Instant Messaging clients are already pretty much interoperable.
- Like this
-
(12 Comments)Whoever created the chart doesn't understand these companies' business or online market metrics....