Microsoft (MSFT) Turns Its Back On Yahoo! (YHOO)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Microsoft (MSFT) has everything it needs to be a king in the online advertising business. And, it does not need Yahoo! (YHOO). Its own internet properties and its purchase of aQuantive (AQNT) are enough.

So says Microsoft Chief Advertising Strategist Yusuf Mehdi, and Wall St. should hope he has approval from the MSFT headquarters to make the comment.

The whole thing rings a bit hollow. Numbers from Hitwise show that Microsoft’s US search share dropped from 12.6% in April 06 to 8.5% last month. Google’s (GOOG) share of market rose sharply to 65.3%.

While search is not everything when it comes to building a successful online advertising business, it is something. Or, perhaps a lot of something. Microsoft may hope its new aQuantive’s ad serving platform and MSN and Microsoft Live can dig that company’s online business out of its hole.

But, it’s unlikely.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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