TechWinter

The news seems to be going crazy over the Yahoo and Microsoft ‘pending’ merger which is all but done with the slumping stock of Yahoo, shareholder lawsuits, and management’s complete failure to execute on anything successfully.

But what does that mean from a search or marketing perspective in the UK?

In the UK we have one of the most advanced online ad industries in the world with many many keywords being purchased from Adwords (some at extortionate prices) Google’s text advertising tool.

So to us (marketeers) it is important what happens to Yahoo, Google and MSN.  It matters because it means money, training, and time.  A painful combination.

That being said there are some that feel this could really allow the market to grow and with all the front page attention, blogs and general publicity from the merger its quite possible smaller and smaller businesses may hop onto the online ad market and increase the size of market place dramatically - Apple’s iPod did exactly that by growing the whole MP3 market.

Rob Dumouchel of SMSRD (Adwords Experts) agrees with me that ‘a merger will have more of an impact on those that are already advertising online, but I think it has potential to do good things for the whole industry.’

Rob Dumouchel blogs @ smsrd.com

So maybe it is a good thing.  I know where I live in UK we have the lowest unemployment rate and the largest economy outside of London yet we are over 85% small to medium size businesses.  Imagine if an additional 10% of our SME’s hopped into the market? How much faster would the market grow?

What are your worries about the merger?  What excites you about the merger?