I do see it possible that msn will make a huge leap and come out with so much new stuff that they really get on the map from one day to the next. it's almost been a year now that they've come out with their "hot new" search engine so far it's a major disappointment. A part of me can't understand that msn would miss out on topping the search engine world as well. We'll see what happens ...
Damn it, so instead of sending useless CDs back to AOL, we'll now have to start sending complaints about rubbish search query results... Its a bit friendlier on the environment I suppose.
Well, this is certainly big news. Obviously, Adwords/AdSense dominates the PPC market but now that Yahoo! has YPN coming out, it was looking like there would be two companies battling it out, even though Google had a big lead. Even though MSN intended to compete in this area, too, it would've been very hardpressed for them to do so. Let's face it, they just don't have the amount of searches needed to attract the mass number of advertisers that Google has. Now, with this deal, it looks like there'll be 3 strong competitors. Google obviously has a huge lead but it's looking better for us publishers each day.
Yahoo is a big winner here, as Google have just lost a shedload of search traffic and with it, the associated data.
Demographics... Look at this artical. Google Users Richer, More Net Savvy Even though less in number, MSN/AOL traffic contains a higher percentage of "novices" that may be easier to convert to sales because they tend to lack the skills or knowledge to "shop around". Caryl
Exactly the way I feel too McDar. I think most people start out using MSN for searches, and some people use Yahoo because so many have email accounts there.
Bill Gates pulled up at TWX headquarters in a fleet of dumptrucks full of $100 bills, waved, hopped out of the truck and said "How about you start using MSN as your search partner?". Google only had a Ryder van and a few beat-up VW buses full of $100s, so they lost out, unfortunately. It went something like that, the details aren't too important.
Well for me the thing that matters is that I come up in the top 3 for many kw's on MSN search..So this new deal makes me happy...
Doesn't look like Microsoft was able to pull it off. http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051216-124401 Not only that, but Google is buying a 5% stake in AOL for $1B. http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/051216/media_timewarner_google.html