• All Analyst Weblogs
• North America
  • Bill Tancer
  • Heather Hopkins
  • Heather Dougherty
• United Kingdom
  • Robin Goad
• Asia Pacific
  • Alan Long
  • Sandra Hanchard
  • Hitwise To Go
• Insider
  • Client
  • Company
  • Industry
  • Product

Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

Analyst Weblog

« Job Searches by Brand, Location, Occupation | What are Australians Doing Online? Global Benchmarks »

Microsoft and Yahoo! - Australian Perspective

February 06, 2008

Media buyer, Harold Mitchell in this article makes some pertinent commentary about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!: "Yahoo's Australian partnerships would make Microsoft's proposed deal problematic." This comment is made in light of the fact that both technology companies have strong relationships with local media networks; i.e. Microsoft and Network Nine (ninemsn) vs Yahoo! and Channel 7 (Yahoo!7).

I've adopted Bill's charts for the Australian market, and given the potential impact of the bid on local publishers, have included News Corporation and Fairfax Digital properties.

You'll see that the combined properties of Microsoft and Yahoo! would account for 23% market share of all Internet visits in Australia, just behind Google at 24.5% for the week ending 2 February 2008. That's a completely different picture from the U.S. market where Microsoft and Yahoo! together would outstrip visits to Google properties by a significant margin.

In the search landscape, Google similarly dominates, accounting for 87.97% of all executed searches in Australia for the four weeks in January 2008 (includes .com and .com.au properties) – while combining executed searches for Yahoo! Search and MSN Search would amount to 10.5% for the same time period. Interesting to observe that between Jan 07 and Jan 08, MSN Search has overtaken Yahoo! Search.

As Bill points out, the combined properties of Microsoft and Yahoo! would have a more significant impact on categories other than Search. The below table lists the top 5 websites in key industries from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Fairfax properties, for the week ending 2 February 2008. You'll see that in Portal Frontpages, the top five Microsoft and Yahoo! domains would account for 90.17%% share for the week ending 2 February 2008; while in Email Services the top four Microsoft and Yahoo! domains would amount to 76.48% share.

For verticals such as Employment and Property in Australia, a Microsoft / Yahoo! merger could complicate syndicated content relationships; for example, Yahoo!7 has relationships with Fairfax properties Domain.com.au and MyCareer.com.au; while ninemsn is syndicated with realestate.com.au and seek.com.au (through PBL).

View image

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:40 AM | (0) | (1)

TrackBack

TrackBack URL:
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/719.

Links to weblogs that reference this entry:

• Microsoft and Yahoo! - Australian Perspective (Research News Jul 2007- Jan 2008)
  Media buyer, Harold Mitchell in this article makes some pertinent commentary about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo!: "Yahoo's Australian partnerships would make Microsoft's proposed deal problematic." This comment is made in light of the fact that both techn... [Read More]