As Yahoo continues to struggle in trying to avoid a possible Microsoft takeover, its search for an ally continues as well. Despite pressures on the Yahoo Board to hold an annual meeting, Yahoo is planning to bid some more time to reach a good deal with a possible ally, AOL.
The Wall Street Journal outlines Yahoo’s current talks with AOL and laid out the possible plan if the talks pushed through. Citing people close to the matter, the WSJ report says that a possible scenario was folding AOL into Yahoo with Time Warner getting a sizable minority stake in resulting merged companies. The talk is set to give both companies an estimated $1 billion in annual cost savings, if the deal comes into reality.
Although the talks did not mention of a possible search advertising involvement by Google, the possibility of outsourcing Yahoo’s search advertising to Google still looms in the background. Google currently handles AOL’s search advertising and even has a minority stake in AOL holdings. But the combination of AOL and Yahoo would inevitably result in an advertising powerhouse. And you could just imagine how lucky Google would be, should the deal pushed through.
Consider the possibility of these scenarios:
- Ask.com conceding to Google’s supremacy in the search engine department
- Yahoo and AOL planning to merge, including search advertising which is outsourced to Google
- Microsoft’s online advertising not that good compared to Google
That leaves us with basically two online advertising major players, Google and Microsoft. No wonder Google has kept its silence with regards to the current issue battling Yahoo, and Microsoft’s insistence to takeover Yahoo. Either way, Google is still set to win after all this is through, and that it able to achieve without too much effort at all.
