Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

The cries are going back and forth and it’s fun to watch. Of course we all know the offer done by Microsoft, being close to $45 billion for Yahoo! Google obviously couldn’t let it rest and now has an official response entitled: Yahoo! and the future of the internet.

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?

Like Michael I can more or less smile at that because with Google having a 40% market share of internet advertising revenues, something like Microhoo would only be good competition against Google, which they of course don’t like. The bigger question really is how to integrate all of them and there I am with John Battelle with the idea that Microsoft should become more like GE. They are already on their way but they can push it. Let’s see how this one will continue.

Of course now Microsoft already did their counterpounch just if you care

John Battelle has a very nice article entitled Thinking About Google and The Turning Point and I can relate. I still remember when Microsoft came out with Passport and what all the rage was. Now we are a lot more quiet and it is getting weird what kind of stuff I happily have on Google. Google tracks my web site (not for long, as it’s not good for a blog, more on that another time), handles my ads, does my eMail, is my search, runs small adwords campaigns for me (did run very big ones at my previous job and will likely again), has my account at Google Answers (and even gave me a blanket for being a researcher from the start :)), a bit of my network in Orkut, tracks me wherever there are AdSense ads, … the list could go on. Remember DoubleClick? When they bought a company that would potentially connect their clickstreams to personal identifiable data, all hell broke loose. HELLLOOOOOOO!!! Google has AdSense, the biggest advertising network ever invented, because it is a sales network and because its integrated effortless and works to a good degree.

Whenever they you see a Google ad, they know what it should be about, what the time of day is, what your country and provider is, what kind of conversion some of the ads have in the ad, what you search for when not surfing around, that you get lots of eMails (they likely don’t “know” what you get as eMail), and lots more stuff. So all in all Google is really approaching a size that makes it sound like the player out there but hey, you can switch. Go somewhere else. Things are hotting up out there and it will only get more interesting.

Technorati Tags: AdSense, AdWords, Clickstream, Google, Doubleclick, Battelle