Yahoo to sell its soul to Google?

The rumors about the possible sale of Yahoo! search engine continue to emerge on the market. It has been recently reported that Internet giant Google has joined the preliminary talks. As for potential buyers, it was said that Yahoo! could be purchased by China's Alibaba. Microsoft is another possible candidate: the corporation tries to expand its presence on the search market.

One of America's oldest search engines continues to decline every year. The company retains a second place on the search market with the share of 15-16 percent. However, the financial position of the company only gets worse.

Yahoo! earned $762 million in  nine months of the current year vs. $927 million during the same period of 2010. The index dropped by 18 percent. The income dropped by 24 percent to $3.66 billion. According to ComScore Inc, US Internet users spend less time to view Yahoo's websites. The index dropped by 33 percent during the recent 2.5 years.

The company faces a serious price competition on the advertising market on the part of Facebook, Hulu.com and several other Internet companies.

Carol Bartz, the head of Yahoo! since 2009, was fired in September 2011. The new president has not been appointed yet - this factor also affects the image of the company on the market.

Google controls 65 percent of the US market, whereas Yahoo's share is a lot smaller - 15-16 percent.

Guerman Klimenko, the president of Russia's LiveInternet, said in an interview with Bigness that he did not know why Google would want to buy Yahoo!.

"I don't know why Google needs Yahoo! at all. Even if it is true, I am sure that there will be no problems with the antimonopoly department. Yahoo! stays in a very complicated situation, so I believe that they will not hamper the rescue of a very large company," Klimenko said.

In 2009, Yahoo! signed a partnership agreement with Microsoft. The ten-year agreement was about joint activities in the field of search technologies. The further integration of the companies looks quite logical. Moreover, Yahoo! would give Microsoft an opportunity to take the second place on the search market of the United States.

Microsoft's Bing search engine won one percent of the market from Google in summer. The joint share of Bing and Yahoo in June has grown to 20.36 percent. Google's share in July dropped to 77.54 percent vs. 78.48 in June.

In 2008, Microsoft proposed to purchase Yahoo! for $44.6 billion. The price of the company has decreased considerably since that time. The capitalization of the company at Nasdaq makes up $20.13 billion. A considerable part of the cost - $12.5 billion - is a share at Alibaba, Chinese electronic commerce operator.

The sale of Yahoo! is only a question of time.

Vitaly Salnik.