Google beware: Does Microsoft lust for Yahoo?
UPDATE: What Microsoft Yahoo merger? WSJ vs. NY Post
So it would seem, given the “inspired” meet-up of Microsoft top brass with the Yahoo CEO, at Microsoft’s downtown Seattle Strategic Account Summit next week.
Joanne Bradford, Corporate Vice President, Chief Media Officer, MSN, has honors at the event, taking to the stage with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Terry Semel…
Bradford’s role at Microsoft is to make sure her company is “at the forefront of delivering rich, immersive online experiences that are funded by advertisers."
Bradford, in fact, served as a Microsoft top salesperson, the head of global sales and marketing and chief media revenue officer for Microsoft before being bumped up to her current top job.
Bradford addressed Advertising Week in New York City last Fall, when she was the company’s signature sales person. I chatted with her then about Microsoft vs. Google advertising sales strategies.
There appears to be no love lost, of course. Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t get it, Bradford asserted; He doesn’t get how to sell to high level, brand conscious advertisers, but Microsoft does.
(see Google: Technology driven or people driven?)
Yahoo does as well. Semel’s happiest moments during his Wall Street earnings calls are when he touts “we have the largest display advertising network” and we “attract an extremely large majority of the Ad Age top 100 advertisers in any given quarter.”
Semel will team up with Bradford to discuss “The New Network” next week.
Will the REAL new network be a combined Microsoft-Yahoo one, as the latest industry chatter suggests?
Courtesy of unidentified “sources” in an EXCLUSIVE touted by The New York Post, and including tales of Microsoft “lust”:
Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations. While Microsoft and Yahoo! have held informal deal talks over the years, sources say the latest approach signals an urgency on Microsoft's part that has up until now been lacking.
The new approach follows an offer Microsoft made to acquire Yahoo! a few months ago. But Yahoo! spurned the advances of the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Wall Street sources put a roughly $50 billion price tag on Yahoo!. "They're getting tired of being left at the altar," said one banking source who has recently had talks with Microsoft. "They now seem more willing to extend themselves via a transaction to get into the game."
Part of the reason for that is because Google keeps trumping Microsoft on the deal front, beating out the company on not just DoubleClick, but also for a renewed search advertising pact with AOL in 2005 that Microsoft lusted after.
Moreover, with Google developing Internet-based software that directly competes with Microsoft Office, sources said Microsoft has no choice but to go on the offensive."The minute you hear Microsoft start arguing against something on antitrust grounds, you know they are desperate and need to do something big," said one source.
Sources also said Microsoft is working with Goldman Sachs.
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