so what is this really about?

Story: New Microsoft Bid for Yahoo Search?Total Replies: 19
Author Content
tuxchick

Jul 03, 2008
7:16 PM EDT
Why is Microsoft so hell-bent on breaking up Yahoo? Is it just ego, that CEO Steve needs a big flashy deal to look tuff? Is it just plain old stock manipulation, or some other financial funny business? It's like a remake of Moby Dick, with Captain Steve Ahab and the great white Yahoo whale.
bigg

Jul 03, 2008
7:27 PM EDT
The future is the web (at least in his mind). Google is the king of the web. Yahoo is the only one that has any chance (a brand and the right people) to compete with Google. Google is too expensive, hence Microsoft has to acquire Yahoo.

At least that's what I've been able to piece together from the various stories.
tuxchick

Jul 03, 2008
7:37 PM EDT
Ballmer's just now wising up to the Web?

;)
alc

Jul 04, 2008
1:42 AM EDT
The Web? Is that that thing still around?
techiem2

Jul 04, 2008
9:37 AM EDT
aren't we on like Web 32.5 now?
TxtEdMacs

Jul 04, 2008
10:27 AM EDT
tech (*)

You are confusing patch number with version.

* I can't bring myself to preface names with the @ symbol, that suppresses visible error messages from functions in php ... though I have been tempted.
Sander_Marechal

Jul 04, 2008
3:10 PM EDT
@TxtEdMacs: You must have a rough time e-mailing people then :-)

TxtEdMacs

Jul 05, 2008
11:05 AM EDT
Email? You mean @ing to them? No problem, it's not a prefix. No harm done, no one is shut up permanently. But a few suffer cuts due to the incisiveness of my words.
Bob_Robertson

Jul 05, 2008
4:49 PM EDT
I think MS management is simply pissed at Yahoo!'s refusal of their merger offer.

So now, to MS, Yahoo! must die.
thenixedreport

Jul 05, 2008
6:37 PM EDT
What Bob said.
TxtEdMacs

Jul 06, 2008
7:07 AM EDT
This pertains to the question posed: why does MS want Yahoo?

I am wondering if individuals running sites might be open to sharing some statistics* on bot visits (interested in Yahoo, Google and MS's numbers) and the resultant referral rates. When I look at my statistics, if they are real and general, they make me think MS is either utterly desperate, or insane, or crazy like a fox. If I see a broader pattern that holds on multiple sites, I will make a guess at what MS's motives are most likely based, in a publication tied to LXer.

* Webalizer summaries for a couple of months on the hits and referrals would more than suffice. Used the "confirmed visit sets shown under awstats, for example:

Robots/Spiders visitors (Top 25) - Full list - Last visit

and

Connect to site from .... Links from an Internet Search Engine - Full list - Google ; nnn nnn - Yahoo! ; nnn nnn

On the lower set only need numbers on hits (indexing) and referral not the pages or hits statistics of the latter. Also no need for the standings.
techiem2

Jul 06, 2008
8:45 AM EDT
I would, but I have the msn and yahoo bots both blocked via robots.txt since they are bandwidth hogs.... :) Although, assuming that they all hit the robots.txt every visit it appears that this month so far my home server has had 10 visits from googlebot, 11 visits from msnbot, and 2 visits from yahoobot (my server runs on two ports, 443 and 444, so I counted the totals, yahoobot hasn't hit the ssl port (which is odd considering that's what most of the links I post to my site online point to).

No visits to the site this month via search engines.

(yeah, this isn't overly useful, but it's the only current stats I had...I just found out that an awstats update or something had changed a path location so the logs hadn't been generated since sometime 2007 I believe...oops).
Sander_Marechal

Jul 06, 2008
4:41 PM EDT
I'm happy to share my own stats. Google accounts for 89.5% of the visits I get through search engines. Yahoo accounts for 1.6%. Most of the rest is gobbled up by "unknown".

Also, through my work as internet marketeer I see a *lot* of web statistics for all kinds of companies. I can't divulge them of course, but suffice to say that Google is usually the big bulk while leaving scraps for the rest. That's mostly Dutch sites though. IIRC Yahoo and MSN have a larger share in e.g. the US market. The Dutch market is a near Google monopoly.
gus3

Jul 06, 2008
6:11 PM EDT
Quoting:Why is Microsoft so hell-bent on breaking up Yahoo?
It strikes me more like, "if I can't have you, then nobody can have you."

If Microsoft isn't good enough to take over Yahoo, then Microsoft will make sure nobody else has the chance, either. After all, it would make someone else look better than Microsoft.

<snark>Like Microsoft isn't doing a fine job of that on their own...</snark>
rijelkentaurus

Jul 07, 2008
4:54 AM EDT
Quoting: IIRC Yahoo and MSN have a larger share in e.g. the US market.


Yeah, something like 5%, LOL!! ;0)
TxtEdMacs

Jul 07, 2008
6:03 AM EDT
S_M,

Fine on the action side, but how much is expended by each in monthly visits? That is, I am looking at the energy expended vs the effective usage. Your numbers are the only the latter.

tech*,

Have any numbers from 2007 you could show me? You can be acknowledged or it could be anonymous. I am more interested in total hits per month vs referrals. In other words, effort vs useful work out put (efficiency).

anyone: the numbers I have interest are not a direct measure of market share, my interest is how efficiently they pursue their goal. Off hand I cannot see these numbers translate directly into market share on advertising, since there must be a base value,below which yields no revenue. Again my interest is how much work is expended to see something accomplished, i.e. yield in used referrals.

On my site, the referrals are not proportional to the efforts expended.
Sander_Marechal

Jul 07, 2008
8:55 AM EDT
@TxtEdMacs: Total number of page views for my website was 33758 in that month, so search engines were 16.2% of my traffic. Google alone was 14% of all my traffic. I don't have any conversion points on my website so I don't have any stats about that.

If that's not the data you're looking for, please rephrase your previous comment towards me. It's hard to parse and I don't quite understand what you mean.
jacog

Jul 08, 2008
11:27 PM EDT
What is this about?

Ok... tin foil hat time!

Hmmm.. .what if... what if Microsoft don't really want Yahoo at all, and are fully aware they won't ever get it, but are just using this very high publicity "attempted" takeover to act as a diversion to distract everyone from other things they are trying to squeese through unnoticed?
techiem2

Jul 08, 2008
11:33 PM EDT
I'll have to dig through the stats and see what I've still got and compile something for ya.

thenixedreport

Jul 09, 2008
12:01 AM EDT
jacog,

You may have just hit a bullseye. ;)

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