For some reason, people commenting on the potential acquisition of Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO), continue to mainly focus on the impact it would have on search share. While that's obviously important, it's far from the whole story, and probably even less important than other properties that would grow as a result of a merger between the two.
Hitwise put together a table showing the various properties Microsoft and Yahoo! currently place in ... as far as Internet visits.
Yahoo! brings an extraordinary amount of Internet traffic to the table, which would result in an increased strength in the growing importance of a variety of ads placed around their content.
Assuming a deal is made, the two companies would combine for a market share of 15.6 percent of all Internet visits in the U.S.
Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) on the other hand, accounts for less than half that, getting 7.7 U.S. market share in web visits.
When you consider portals, email, news, finance, shopping and music, Yahoo is the No. 1 web property in all categories in the U.S., as far as visits go. Put that all together with Microsoft, and the possibities that could be done are almost limitless.
This is one of the reasons why Yahoo! continues to be a puzzle, because it hasn't been able to utilize its strong market position in key categories on the Internet. It's a major reason an offer can even be made for them.
The table below is as of January 26, 2008.
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