expertSEM

The attitude at Microsoft and Yahoo today must be something like the Sunday brunch after a wedding where the bridal party got into a fight, and the wedding was called off. Each camp is brooding and thinking what could’ve been, if only…

The clear loser to me is Microsoft, their PPC and display businesses are both “banged up”, and neither product works very well (I do use both, and can attribute multiple disasters and near disasters to AdCenter and Atlas). Microsoft seemed to go into stasis as the talks of a merger warmed up, and for anyone crossing their fingers that AdCenter or Atlas would see improvements even if the Yahoo deal went bust, four words for you: Don’t Count On It.

The best thing to come out of this disaster of a deal was that I realized how much Steve Balmer is starting to look like Shrek:

(courtesy NY Times)

(trademark- Dreamworks SKG c/o IMDB.com)

I can’t think of the cartoon that Jerry Yang resembles, so suggestions on that front are welcome.

I’d call Jerry the winner, even though their stock takes a massive hit, Yahoo stays independent. While the greedy shareholders will try and tear his head off, I think they’ll pull through. This brings up an interesting question, while the shareholders own the company, is the board required to always act in a way that brings the highest profit, even at the expense of destroying/selling the company? Isn’t this a form of corporate cannibalism that should be rejected?

Either way, search marketers will have to sit and wait for any other company to match Google’s excellent line of marketing products. I’m not holding my breath.