Yahoo has tightened up their advertising policy with regards to gambling website. Advertisers are no longer allowed to be seen to invite users to gamble or mention prizes or mention money in their adverts, although you are still able to mention terms such as ‘poker’.
Yahoo has changed their policy to ensure they comply with Gambling Commission laws passed in the UK last year.
There are an awful lot of rumours currently doing the rounds in the search engine marketing industry that Microsoft is seeking a merger deal with Yahoo. There have been a number of informal discussions between Microsoft and Yahoo over a merger deal over the years that have not amounted to anything, could we be about to see a change?
If the a deal were to go ahead (at an approximate cost to Microsoft of in excess of $50 billion) this would mean that a combined Yahoo and Microsoft would be a formidable force for Google to contend with.
Will a merger deal ever happen? We have our doubts.
The search engine Yahoo completes the acquisition bid of the Right Media. Yahoo already a 20% share holder in the Right Media paid £340 million pounds to buy the remaining 60% share.
Right Media established in 2005 operate a digital media trading network which boasts some 200,000 daily users.
Yahoo justifies the acquisition through their possibility to now deliver their advertising to upcoming and ever popular social networking web sites such as Face Book and MySpace.
After working in the internet industry for over 7 years I have seen a great change in the number of search engine s that have come and gone and the branding strategies each have used. I remember the days that Yahoo was the big place for searching and phrases such as “do you yahoo” were publicised everywhere.
In the past 3 years Google has increased its search engine industry domination above all other competitors drastically. The new catch phrase for search engines is ‘Google it’. I have read some old articles about how tight Google has became with their trademarks and the use of the word ‘Google’. In 2006 the oxford dictionary placed the word ‘Googling’ in their dictionary Wikipedia explains this as:
“Googling someone, or to say that some brand or concept, “does (or doesn’t) google,” indicates whether or not information can be found on the subject using the Google engine”
Google have claimed in the past that they may sue people for breaking their trademark by using ‘googling’ without a capital. Lucky for us normal people who use the word ‘googling’ as a figure of speech is “not likely to face legal proceedings” (Google wants people to stop googling, By Will Sturgeon, Silicon.com). Like many other bloggers I don’t understand why Google has become so tight with this. I am sure every company would be happy to have their company name turned into a verb by its customers. So for Google branding their site and marketing it be the place to ‘Google’ things is not really what they were after what is it that they want?
Next week I will talk about how SEO is now expressed in numerous ways.
