Kevin Johnson, President of Platforms and Services Division at Microsoft, leads over 12,000 employees responsible for product development, marketing and strategy for the Windows and Online Services businesses. At the UBS Investor Conference in Seattle on Thursday, Kevin outlined Microsoft’s ambition to grow their online search business to 30 percent.
Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street analyst and blogger on The Huffington Post sparked off a rumour based on Kevin Johnson’s speech. According to Blodget, the only way Microsoft can achieve this ambitious market share growth is by buying some other company that already has a 20 percent share of the online search market – Yahoo!
Fuelled by the rumour of an impending acquisition shares of Yahoo! (YHOO) closed up nearly 6 percent on Friday. While the reality of a Microsoft acquisition might spell disaster for some at Yahoo! Wall Street seems to look at the prospect very favourably.
