According to All Things Digital report late on Thursday, Microsoft and Yahoo are nearing a deal.
According to the report, the two sides are “down to the short strokes” and a deal could come within a week, All Things Digital said.
The report goes on to say that Microsoft will pay Yahoo several billion dollars upfront to take over its search advertising business and guarantee certain payments back to Yahoo.
Back in May Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said that she was open to a search deal with Microsoft for a “boatload of money”.
With Microsoft’s Bing getting some good reviews and gaining market share at the expense of Yahoo, the deal may get done this time.
Of course what the effect of such a deal on domainers would be is wide open to speculation.
Does this mean that PPC will take a bigger hit ?
Anthony
There are so many possibilities it would be impossible even to hazard a guess at what would happen short term or long term.
I have been hearing for quite some time Yahoo has another “quality control” layer that will be implemented shortly that will further reduce PPC.
Interesting that their online advertising is growing and yet the PPC pie is disappearing … the big fish are getting fatter eating the little fish 🙂
Anthony
Here’s the deal.
Domainers are still sending the traffic to Yahoo and Google they were last year, when the payouts to us were double.
So if your Google and you cut your payouts by 20% and you keep getting the same traffic and cut it 20% again and still get the same level of traffic, you can see they have no incentive to increase payouts and will keep cutting the share paid to you until they see a loss of traffic
I say send what traffic you can to eBay, Amazon, Shopping, a direct deal with an advertisers for a redirect(s), non-profits, CJ, whatever!
Just stop sending it to Google and Yahoo. I started moving that direction about eight months ago and I gotta tell you I am making more with eBay than I was in parking on those domains. I use generics exclusively to do it. It’s hit and miss, but you keep experimenting, and before you know it you have a portfolio of income producing domains at eBay, Amazon and elsewhere.
MHB … Google/Yahoo/MSN is simply proceeding like any good oligopoly …
For many domains, use it or lose may be what the future holds.
I certainly don’t look forward to having to choose between Google & Microsoft. I still think Yahoo shouldn’t sell out. They’ve got a gold-mine there, the just need to figure out how to get the gold out of it.
Well the way things are going and with Yahoo losing market share, I’m just trying to avoid a situation where we only have a choice between Google and Google
Build your own webpages and put links for relevant affiliate programs (via CJ, Amazon ebay, whatever) and also some PPC through an Adsense type program. You don’t have to do just one or the other. A big project if you have a lot of domains, but start with your highest traffic or best converting ones first, and move down the line. You might also be able to forward a bunch of similar domains to one page you build, if it’s relevant to do so. I had a bit of a drop from Adsense earlier this year, but it’s back up now. With the amount of ad dollars moving online, and more sites competing for traffic, PPC and ad rates will have to go back up.
robb – any examples of generic pages you have done this with? Thanks.
Microsoft is already making a play in the domain space with Bing. For example type-in PLAZA.COM or any of the thousands of others they have been buying up. Partial list here:
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/search?q=MICROSOFT+DOMAINS
Question is whether they will park yours or wait until you are burnt to the stake with PPC and then they take them on the drop. Microsoft buyers are very active on Snap and Name Jet using shell companies. Just go back and test some of the recent sales and see the Bing page you get.
. . . an’ that phone you hear ringing is Google trying to get through to the DOJ to beg them to stop it . . .
I have to say this is a big yawn for me. MS might buy some Yahoo but I am counting on MS to screw it up and/or jam it down our throats with Windows 7 or whatever they want to call it.
DOESN’T MATTER.
Yahoo talent will quit. They won’t fit in with the Ballmer culture and they would much rather work at Google or facebook or twitter.
Owen very interesting … what better way for the Oligopoly to take more search
market share than to crucify their competitors and take domain portfolios for their
deflated values ?
Owen very interesting … what better way for the Oligopoly to take more search
market share than to crucify their competitors and take domain portfolios for their
deflated values ?
OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi