Word on the online world is that Sean Suchter, Yahoo’s top search engineer has left Yahoo the day after Jerry Yang stepped down as CEO. Yang was well known for his dedication to Web Search with his strong, perhaps stubborn efforts to grow this sector of Yahoo’s business including the rejection of Microsoft’s bids.

The tipster who gave this information to valleywag.com, states

“Today is the end of Yahoo Search. Sean Suchter just left for Microsoft. Everyone in the office is shocked. I’ve been on the Yahoo Search team for a while and he is the one key executive that it all depends on. If Microsoft has convinced him to leave and join them, they won’t need to buy Yahoo Search. We will just all join Microsoft anyway. I am definitely going to send him my resume.”

Suchter apparently commanded a lot of loyalty and respect from the Yahoo search group. Yahoo has already lost a search executive, Qi Lu, to Microsoft. Will there be more to come? Could Microsoft end up hiring it’s way into Yahoo’s search business?
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Google and Yahoo has abandoned their efforts to overcome the objections of the antitrust regulators who have hindered it’s progress because they believe it would give Google too much power over online advertising.

This was announced today [Wed Nov 5]. This could be seen as another hit for Yahoo is currently at $14.02 a share. Yahoo had previously hoped that this deal would give a $800 million boost to it’s revenue line. It was a reaction deal to the shareholders anger over management’s decision to forego the $47.5 billion takeover deal by Microsoft.

Google had previously announced that this deal would have been great for the online world. However Google is not expected to take much of a hit because of it’s dominant hold on search marketing.

“We’re of course disappointed that this deal won’t be moving ahead,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, wrote on a company blog. “But we’re not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on.”
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News Corp owned Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which owns social MySpace, has surpassed Yahoo! as the owner of the largest share of display advertising in the US according to comScore data.

In June, total display ad views on FIM sites was over 56.8 million views which makes up 15.9% of all display advertising in the US. Yahoo! sites served up 53.1 billion display ads in the same month for a 14.2% share. Top display advertisers on FIM include University of Phoenix & Deutsche Telekom while the top Yahoo! display advertisers are Netflix & Nextag.

Concerns at Yahoo?
This new data shows a change from May when Yahoo had 15.9% share and FIM had a 13.5% share. With Yahoo!’s stocks dipping below $20, there has been many concerns regarding whether Yahoo! will be able to maintain or grow their advertising business. Yahoo! has been under much pressure to show shareholders that their advertising business will continue to grow and remain strong after turning away a $47.5 billion offer from Microsoft.

Good News MySpace
FIM’s growth in the advertising business is good news for their social networking property MySpace which makes up nearly all of FIM’s display advertising revenue. However there continues to be a struggle for advertisers to generate revenue off of social networking sites as these ad medium has generally had a poorer conversion rate compared to other online marketing tactics.

MySpace has reported that their fiscal fourth quarter revenue grew 23% year to year to $225 million due to search and advertising gains. They also noted that their ability to “hyper target” in delivering ads to specific group of consumers has contributed to this growth.

Display Advertising
Forrester projects that $2.78 billion will be spent by retailers this year. That would make display advertising over a third of all online marketing which is projected to be $8.2 billion according to Forrester. Search Engine marketing makes up $3.63 billion and email marketing is third at $1.25 billion.

AOL, Microsoft & Google sites round out the top 5 display advertisers in terms of total market share followed by well known web properties Facebook & Ebay.

Microsoft was the top display advertiser with 5.5 billion display ad views (1.7% share) largely due to its promotional campaign for Live Search. The University of Phoenix, an online university came in second with 4.7 billion ad views (1.4%) followed by Experian Interactive, United Airlines, Verizon, and AT&T all at 3.8-3.9 billion ad views (1.2%).

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - SEM

Google has launched their own web browser today with the promise to better handle complex web programs and video rich content. Google had mailed a copy of a promotional comic book prematurely. The comic book can be found here. It was immediately followed by a post on Google’s blog site confirming the rumor that quickly spread across the web. The browser is called Google Chrome. It is considered “a fresh take on the browser”. Their plan is to make all of Chrome’s software code open to developers similar to Mozilla’s Firefox format.

This launch follows a recent update to Internet Explorer 8 as well as Firefox 3. It also follows a recent 3 year partnership extension between Mozilla and Google. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera being the main players, Google enters a very highly competitive space.

Google continues to produce different softwares and applications with the intention of having them fully integrated with one another. With office applications, desktop search, a new browser, email, google earth, Android among many other programs there is definitely a long term goal of providing an all-in-one fully integrated solution for their consumers. Most likely it will also be free of charge.

Call it another shot at Microsoft. Microsoft needs to figure out a strategy to counter this movement or they will continue to see their market share erode.

Thoughts? Please comment!

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - SEM

Yahoo! & Ichan have come to an agreement a few weeks ahead of the upcoming shareholders meeting. It was expected that the meeting would result in a contentious battle between Yang and his board and Carl Icahn and his supporters. Icahn had proposed ousting the entire Yahoo! board and replacing them with his own suggested group. However Yahoo! And Icahn agreed to expand its board to 11 members. Icahn and two new members will join the board while current director Robert Kotick will step down. The two new members are expected to be from the pool of board members recommended by Icahn.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing