Microsoft says “Yahoo!” (or, at least, they would like to)
So, Microsoft want ‘Yahoo!’.
Well, they’ve wanted it for a while apparently. But what does this mean for the future of the internet? A lot, actually. This is not just one very big company buying another very big company- this signifies the future. Or at least, Bill Gates and Microsoft’s vision of the future. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! for something close to $50 Billion, and they probably will get their way- Microsoft tends to be in the business of getting their way. But, I hear you asking, surely this is just one giant and another giant coming together and all will stay pretty much the same for you and me (maybe I’ll have to type in www.microhoo!.com or www.yasoft.com but that’s just perfunctory, juvenile PC functioning, of course?). Well, maybe those may be the sites that you are visiting, but in the broader spectrum there is a war on for internet users, a war on for internet advertising revenue and a war on who is going to get the biggest chunk of that audience and, thus, that revenue.
The connection between online advertising and the future of the internet (that includes the necessary and growing internet news market, specifically which I will come to later) is one that is inextricably linked. Advertisers pay where people are, and by the evidence of the increase in advertising on the internet ( $16.9 Billion in 2006 and expected to grow by a quarter in 2007) this shows the genuinely startling audience figures that sites are commanding, and a sizeable pie that Microsoft wouldn’t mind having a bit of.
But the reason this acquisition is taking place, the big thing that is leading the huddled masses on the internet and directing them anywhere they want to go is, of course, ‘Google’. The big boys. The most innovative, popular and efficient search engine on the web. They are good. In fact, they are so good at the game they even the mythical Microhoo!, once together, would still not command as much traffic as they do. So once the merger is done, that is not the job done, that is the job started- in essence. You see, there are many facets in the internet game the two (oh sorry, three) giants play. The most obvious and explicit to you and me is the search engine. (Where you go to get somewhere else. The original place you go, of course, being so much more important than where that takes you). Google win this one, with 62% of all web search hits, compared to a combined 16% for other two. E-Mail (another very big deal, and possibly with increasing importance in the future) is won very easily by Microsoft and Yahoo (oh, by the way, I am imagining this fight, much like a boxing match, only with more glasses per person and it is being staged in a large ring known as Silicon Valley.) Microsoft’s ‘Hotmail’ and Yahoo! Mail are significantly greater in usage than ‘GMail’. The art of tailoring advertisements to internet content is already being used by Google (there’s that innovation I was talking about) and this procedure will no doubt be brought in by Microsoft as it ensures the advertisers that the right people see the right thing. Hence, more sold by them and more paid to the server- everybody is a winner, right? No. The crushingly moral issue of tailoring content will not stop it happening, but at least must be enough of a concern to not rejoice in the admitted innovation that sparked its birth.
Of course, all carry news and connections to news, but this is not a space for innovation in the sense of offering something new. The whole concept of using this acquisition as an example is to show the increasing importance of the internet as a real global contributor to the economy and society. Both of the highest ‘hit’ websites in the world have access to news, but what prominence does it hold in your face (that’s you, the audience) and what of its quality? At this time, there is still the seismic reliance on the mainstream news broadcaster- television and radio. Even within television, the heavy reliance is on the old broadcasters, the BBC’s and RTE’s of this world. The change over to internet news being used as even a secondary or tertiary source for the mainstream public’s news intake will take longer than expected. Sure, real inroads can, and will, be made, but the public trust in the internet as a mainstream news output is still far from being close to reality. The growth of this medium as a real contender in the news world must start with it becoming a contender in other, less publicly important, aspects. The last thing that Microsoft hopes to get out of such an acquisition (of course, because it is the least popular, and thus, least profitable aspect) is a mainstream news site. This is because mainstream internet users are at a premium. Perhaps, in the future, a war may begin on what juggernaut internet company will command the greatest audience tuning in (wait, clicking in) for the nine o’clock news. Oh, and it will still be about those advertising revenues, don’t forget.
