SearchEngineUpdate with Vanessa Zamora - 07-16-2008 Part I
Abstract: 1. Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Meet Before US Congressional Committee, 2. Twitter Confirms Acquisition of Summize
Vanessa Zamora
Video Content Producer, SearchEngineWorld
4:55 pm on July 16, 2008 (utc 0)
Transcript
Wednesday July 16, 2008
Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Meet Before US Congressional Committee
The search advertising deal between Google and Yahoo should be blocked, according to Microsoft, noting the advertising industry has never seen one company, namely Google, dominate 90% of a market. The statement came yesterday, where Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others met before a US congressional committee to discuss concerns regarding online competition with regards to the proposed Yahoo Google search advertising partnership. Google defended its position stating it would be good for Internet users, who would benefit by seeing ads better targeted to their interest, advertisers which will be able to deliver more targeted ads, and publishers which will benefit from increased revenue from better matched website ad placement. Google also defended its position saying, the deal would fuel competition by strengthening Yahoo’s revenues, which could in turn put the money toward improvements. The deal, struck between the two firms last month, is expected to increase Yahoo's cash flow by $200m to $450m in the first year alone.
On Monday Microblogging site Twitter announced it had finalized the purchase of search tool Summize. Although the amount of the acquisition was not disclosed, its speculated the amount was somewhere around $15 million in cash and mostly Twitter stock. The news confirms rumors surrounding the possibility of an acquisition that surfaced last week. Summize already provides Twitter with the tools to let users filter and search discussions surrounding any topic, but to date offered in-house capabilities limited to a feature called Track. 5 of the 6 Summize employees, who are engineers, will join the Twitter team moving forward, while Founder and CEO Jay Verdy will move on to his next project. With the addition of search to the its API, Twitter can now focus on other areas including how to monetize the site, how to improve service performance, and other site specific projects.
