A report from the Sunday Wall Street Journal said that Google contacted at least two firms that have expressed interest in buying Yahoo since the dismissal of CEO Carl Bartz last month.
While neither Google nor the firms in question would comment on the rumors, a potential Google acquisition would have massive effects on search and other Yahoo products, such as email. This would give Google the majority share (by far) in key online markets, and brands planning SEO and other internet marketing campaigns would need to further cater to Google, accordingly.
Ongoing antitrust issues between Google and the federal government would likely intensify should Google attempt to acquire Yahoo, which follows Google as the second-most popular search destination on the web. The WSJ’s story did not say that Google was planning a takeover, so much as the company was monitoring the situation.
Currently, Yahoo is under a partnership with Microsoft to use Bing to fuel its search results. Should Google acquire Yahoo, Bing would likely lose a major portion of its market share. Even with the Yahoo agreement, Bing-powered search has struggled to make any substantial progress on Google’s massive search market share. Brafton recently reported that September 2011 saw Google surpass the 66 percent point in term of total search queries in the U.S.
