expertSEM

The news of the weekend for us search marketeers is the passage of Steve Balmer’s deadline to Yahoo to accept the MSN bid of $31 per share (45 billion dollars, give or take a few hundred million). So now what?

Well, we can consider this as Yahoo’s ultimate Double Dog Dare with the fate of the company hanging in the balance.

Will Balmer end up like Flick, with his tongue stuck on a frozen steel pole while the rest of us run wild in astonishment of his mad Hybris?  Or will it be Jerry Yang and friends tasting icy cold steel and wishing they had accepted a fair offer?

While investment banks and traders hold their Aeron chairs in white knuckled anticipation, we search marketers won’t be holding our breaths.  The recent “improvements” to Yahoo’s interface generally amount to relabeling and increasing the size of buttons and options which were already present, and having waited the past three years for some meaningful improvement in either MSN’s AdCenter platform, or of their acquisition, Atlas, I don’t foresee the tech team over in Redmond ever coming around to a use-able platform that makes campaign manager’s jobs any easier.

So unless you like gambling, I would still bet on Google to come out on top at the end of any deal.  Their focus on technology and customer service has won the day for years.  I wouldn’t expect a change from MSN no matter what they buy.