The ongoing saga of the search engine world seems to have ended, briefly.

Microsoft announced over the weekend that it is withdrawing its bid to acquire Yahoo ending its 3 month dance with the second most popular search engine. In a letter released on PR Newswire CEO Steve Ballmer cites Yahoo’s AdWord deal with Google as a factor for the deal falling through.

Ballmer states that Yahoo ‘pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to
the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms… …would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable.’

Ballmer goes on to give reasons such as; ‘it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google’ over its own Ad serving technology.’

I don’t think this is the end of the courtship though, it could be Microsoft’s way of devaluing Yahoo’s stock in an effort to take them over at a later, less expensive, date.

Where does that leave us?

Who knows. Maybe Google and Yahoo form another company and try to buy Microsoft, now that would be funny

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com