This day in search marketing history: February 4

Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo, Day 4

In 2008, there were some big developments following the news of Microsoft’s bid to purchase Yahoo. 

Google wasn’t happy about the news. The company objected, suggesting that the move would hurt what it called the underlying principles of the internet: “openness and innovation.”

There was some ironic back and forth, as Google had spent the past year arguing that it should be able to acquire DoubleClick, which Microsoft argued against because it would make Google too dominant in online advertising.

Meanwhile, was Yahoo considering an alliance with Google? And why did Google CEO Eric Schmidt call Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang to offer Yahoo help?

And what about post-acquisition “integration” issues? Local, maps, and mobile were areas where both companies had made significant investments but also had significant duplication and redundancy.

Microsoft sounded pretty confident the deal would happen. As Kevin Johnson put it:

• “It doesn’t make sense to have thousands of engineers at Yahoo working on a search index, thousands of engineers at Microsoft working on the same search index. By combining, we can have one team of people across the two companies working on the search index, and then have others continue to focus on areas where we’ve defined differentiation in search. New search verticals and expanded user experience for search. We’ve got so many ideas, more engineers applied to those ideas will drive breakthroughs in search.”

Dig deeper:

Also on this day

2022: The global site tag could now automatically collect the information (e.g., email, telephone number) that a user submitted on the website.

2022: There were links to the MSN Autos marketplace in the knowledge panels for these car-related searches under “learn more” and “shop used cars” right above the car specifications.

2021: Phrase match would expand to include additional broad match modifier traffic and support for broad match modifier would end.

2020: For the first time, the company disclosed YouTube advertising revenues.

2020: Hitwise informed its customers that daily, weekly and monthly metric updates were on pause until further notice.

2020: Scripts were also coming to Shopping campaigns in Microsoft Advertising.

2019: The company’s primary goal was not to drive revenue and chose not to monetize search results.

2019: Roughly 53% of firms doing local SEO had 10 or fewer clients.

2016: Google started supporting JSON-LD for structured data markup for reviews and products rich snippets.

2016: Once you clicked on the “more destinations” button, Google led you into a travel search experience that made it harder to view organic search results.

2016: The idea, according to Microsoft, was to help users “find” and “do” faster.

2015: Google clarified and expanded on their reconsideration request documentation for those who had been hit by a Google manual action.

2015: The agreement came 3+ years after a similar arrangement ended. It would make tweets easier to find via search.

2015: This had been done previously for easter eggs and Google’s own content, but now it worked for third-party publishers.

2015: The company’s foray into native advertising would harness intent signals from Bing Ads.

2014: For the first time in ages, the three major search companies in the US were all run by CEOs who either came out of a search background or had a solid understanding of it.

2014: Converted clicks = Conversions (1 per-click) and Conversions = Conversions (many-per-click).

2014: The suite was comprised of two new capabilities: Dynamic Product Listing Ads creation and Product Listing Ads optimization.

2014: Searching Google for video-related content would return a large, playable, video directly at the top of the search results.

2014: The app would notify you if a faster route was available while you were in transit.

2013: Viewers turned to their devices to ask [why did the lights go out], [superdome power outage] and [what caused power outage].

2011: Bing said it has search signal, not Google signal.

2011: The mobile audience on Yelp was more active and engaged than its PC audience.

2011: The latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.

2010: Google Store Views would allow people to virtually walk into the store, off of Google Street Views.

2010: Yahoo would continue to have a career site, but it would be powered and populated by Monster.

2010: Major events from the year 2001 in consumer search. 

2009: More coverage:

2009: Google was rolling out voice search on the Android platform via the new software update.

2009: You could use the advanced search features and then subscribe to that search via RSS.

2009: Instant answers were shown for searches related to financial information, weather conditions, movie show times, calculations, equations, conversions, and definitions.

2009: The application automatically collected sites and content as users conducted online research.

2009: Google was the “fourth-largest corporate source of campaign cash” for President Obama’s presidential race.

2009: The major updates included the new Digital Globe satellite imagery they recently licensed and “bird’s eye” photos of Paris, France. 

2008: IAC claimed the legal battle for control of IAC’s board was impeding the company’s ability to effectively operate.

2008: Yahoo ranked as the top site with just under 19% of US online display advertising.

2008: For those who required server-based analytics.

2008: The European Union’s antitrust regulator was likely to impose conditions or ask Google for concessions in order to bless the acquisition.

2008: The tool modeled the potential value of Google equity awards, including transferable stock options.

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These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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