Neoco’s blog - keep up to date with the best digital marketing agency in the world!

The Yahoo! and Microsoft acquisition talks have finally come to an end  - and Google seem to have come out of it as the clear winner.

After a long-running discussion, Yahoo! have decided to partner with Google, building on their recent ad partnership. Yahoo! will now display Google ads next to its search results in the US and Canada from September. Google and Yahoo! also plan to make their instant messaging tools compatible. In total, Yahoo! are expected to gain $800m in additional annual revenues from the deal.

As Microsoft and Yahoo! look to merge, this is turning in to a real soap opera…

Microsoft & Google actually fancy each other; Microsoft loves Googles youthful energy and dynamic rise to wealth and Google loves the established, ‘old school’ power of Microsoft… but it’s a forbidden love. They can never be together, which drives them crazy and makes them want to constantly hurt and out do each other.

In the latest ’series’ of their forbidden love, they pull Yahoo! in to their destructive love-hate relationship…

Microsoft has a one night stand with Yahoo! and then proposes, though not because Microsoft actually fancies Yahoo! - it’s more to get Google’s attention! Something about hurting the ones you love.

Ironically, Yahoo! doesn’t want to marry Microsoft either, but she realises that she’s at a stage in her life where her looks have long faded and her living expenses are a bit higher than her income. Whilst popular, she may not get the chance to bag another rich suitor like Microsoft… but she could hold out to find someone who loves her for who she is. Dilemma.

Yahoo! is unsure about Microsoft’s proposal and decides to think about it, but Microsoft is used to getting any girl he wants and this ‘playing hard to get act’ is something he’s seen many times before. Normally Microsoft would just flash some more bling and the girl would get in the car, but this time, Microsoft feels he’s already flashed enough to Yahoo! so he just goes for the affirmative act of ordering Yahoo! to get in the car. Yahoo! runs crying in to the night…

Confused and upset, Yahoo! seeks solace in the arms of other men. The first to hear about her vulnerability is MySpace who decides to take the opportunity to have a quickie with her (because he’s that kind of guy), but in the morning Yahoo! is back out in the cold. Now she’s feeling really dirty, who should come along but Google. Google knows the situation and wants to get back at Microsoft for hurting him with the initial Yahoo! proposal. Google tells Yahoo! what she wants to hear. Google will love her for who she is and promises to share everything with her - unlike Microsoft. But Google wants to take things slowly, one step at a time. This way Google can really get back at Microsoft without never really needing to commit to Yahoo! (as soon as Microsoft has had enough and the proposal is withdrawn, Google will drop Yahoo! like a sack of potatoes).

Poor Yahoo!. She may be desperate but she’s not stupid. She knows she can’t marry Microsoft or Google as her parents would never approve. So Yahoo! agrees to Google’s ’slowly, slowly’ relationship as rumours surface of stolen kisses with other lovers, notably AOL…

Will Yahoo! actually marry anyone?
Will Yahoo! come home from work early to find Microsoft and Google in bed together?
Does anyone still care who AOL sleeps with?
Will MySpace ever clean up it’s act?

Tune in next week (at this rate) for the next thrilling installment of the MicroHoo! soap opera.

I think it’s safe to say that it is now officially Facebook vs. everyone else when it comes to OpenSocial!

Yahoo has just announced it’s support for Google’s OpenSocial initiative, and it has now joined forces with MySpace and Google to form the non-profit OpenSocial Foundation. The idea behind the foundation is to “ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web.”

Others who are also in on the foundation include: Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING. So, basically, out of all the social networks and web giants on the web, Facebook is the only one that’s out of the loop - for now.

In the OpenSocial camp there is, of course, a lot of hand shaking, back patting and congratulating. Yahoo says they believe “in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users;” MySpace is “setting new industry specifications for social web application development,” while Google is reassuring us that “OpenSocial will be forever free and open..” All three companies will work on OpenSocial, everything will, of course, stay under the Creative Commons copyright license, and they’ve created an open source reference implementation called Shindig, available at incubator.apache.org/shindig/.

The official web site for the Foundation is opensocial.org, while the technical bits are still over at code.google.com/apis/opensocial/.

Microsoft Chief Executive, Eric Schmidt,  has stated that any deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! could be “bad for the Internet”.  Google have already made it clear that they believe that such a deal could have implications for the openness of the Internet, and exert an “inappropriate…influence” over the Internet.

When Microsoft proposed a buyout of Yahoo for $44.6bn last month (which was rejected by Yahoo’s board), experts said that the buyout was an attempt by Microsoft to challenge Google’s dominance. And Eric Schmidt admitted that he would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft.

However, earlier this month, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has said that they will gain market share against Google in search and advertising, even if led to his “last breath” at the firm.

As we told you last week, Yahoo have put back their decision to at least April, and now Microsoft have threatened to oust Yahoo’s 10 directors if it can’t broker an amicable takeover.

An anonymous source has told CNET that Microsoft and Yahoo! are at least talking about a merger on friendly terms. According to the report:

“Microsoft and Yahoo! are holding informal merger discussions, marking a shift from the “radio silence” that previously existed between the two companies, according to a source familiar with the talks.”

This follows the news last week that Yahoo! would be extending the deadline for nominating new members to its board of directors, which we thought might be a signal that they were at least willing to consider negotiating with Microsoft . Microsoft has made it fairly clear that they will initiate a hostile takeover of Yahoo! if they can’t reach an amicable deal. Yahoo currently sits at more than 10 percent below Microsoft’s initital offer price of $31 per share, first announced back on February 1st.

Does anyone else think that this story is just dragging on like an Eastenders crappy plotline involving a ‘will they? won’t they?’ scenario… just get together already!

Microsoft’s free email service Hotmail is currently suffering from a bug that logs off users and prevents them from logging into the service again. Currently, this behavior is affecting only a fraction of the userbase, but the bug has not been fixed yet.

Microsoft spokeswoman Samantha McManus said the following in a statement: “The issue is purely impacting the login process for customers and largely does not impact customers who were already logged in. We have made significant progress in decreasing the number of customers currently affected since initial reports, but the issue has not yet been completely resolved.”

As a consolation, McManus added that Hotmail should be fully operational “shortly,” whatever that means.

Reminds me of a comment I heard earlier online; someone was discussing problems with their Yahoo! email account to which another user quipped “they must be getting ready for the merge with Hotmail!” lol.

Sorry but some things are just too funny to let them pass without comment…

Google co-founder Sergey Brin commented on the potential Microhoo (Microsoft Yahoo) buyout. Brin said that he found Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo an “unnerving” maneuver that threatens innovation on the Internet, and mentioned that such a merger could “violate antitrust laws and harm Internet users.”

Huh?! This is Sergey Brin of Google, right? Check out any Comscore, Nielsen or Compete data talking about exactly how much marketshare Google has over the competition in terms of eyeballs, advertisers or any other number of metrics - though you are probably well aware that Google is the dominant leader in just about everything they put an effort (or buy) into. For Brin to actually say himself that this creates anti-trust issues (especially in the midst of an anti-trust battle themselves) is a bit hypocritical.

Oh and if you thought Google already have enough money to get to the moon, you might not be shocked to learn that the comments were from their HQ for the Lunar X Prize. Lunar X Prize is a race to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon. Because apparently there are no better causes on Earth…