Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! represents the software giant’s last opportunity to compete with Google in the rapidly growing market for online advertising, which is forecast to double to $80 billion within three years
Yell announced this week that full year sales growth (to March 2008) in its UK operations would be 2%, sharply down from the previously forecast 3%, due to “toughening market conditions” since the start of 2008
Distribution growth improved considerably (retail grew 13% versus 8% last quarter), with strong contract sales more than counteracting a relatively weak prepay performance
Rumours that Google was acquiring Yell emerged at the end of last week, but we doubt the search giant would be interested in purchasing a traditional media company, particularly not one predominantly in print