A blogger is making dormant rumors that Microsoft is looking to buy Yahoo active again after a Microsoft executive outlined plans this week for the company to improve its online search market share from about 10 per cent to 30 per cent.
Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget, who writes for the popular liberal blog The Huffington Post, posited Friday that there is no way Microsoft could achieve this goal on its own, so an acquisition may be in the works. His comments come after Microsoft president of platforms and services Kevin Johnson outlined the company’s online search goal at a UBS investor conference in Seattle on Thursday.
In his blog posting, Blodget said Microsoft is no closer to succeeding online than it was when it began 12 years ago, and noted that the company’s online division is still losing about US$1 billion a year.
Seeing as Microsoft still trails both Google and Yahoo for search market share and advertising revenue, and assuming that “Johnson is not a moron,” Blodget wrote that the only way company executives think they can achieve the goal is by making a very specific purchase. According to site analytics firm Compete, Microsoft’s online search market share was 9.2 per cent in September compared to Yahoo’s 19 per cent and Google’s 67 per cent.
“How could Microsoft actually achieve the goals Kevin Johnson laid out?” he asked in his blog. “There’s only one answer: Buy Yahoo. Buying Yahoo would give Microsoft 30 per cent search share instantly.”
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have said they will not comment on rumors or speculation about a deal, gossip that ran rampant in the industry earlier this year.
