The recent agreement that has taken place between Microsoft and Yahoo! has been receiving a lot of interest and attention. Microsoft and Yahoo! are promising a quicker, more reliable and more efficient search engine service and users are eager to see any benefits from the combining of these two companies for this purpose. However, it is widely recognised that the joining of Microsoft and Yahoo! is going to make them a much stronger and capable force, one that is prepared and ready to take on the mighty Google in trying to be the most popular and successful search engine.

Many involved in the search industry and those with an interest in how the companies are now going to go head to head have been awaiting a response from Google to learn how the company is viewing this deal. Google will obviously be affected by this agreement as it is between two of its greatest competitors. Therefore, it is not surprising that the opinion of those at Google has not been overly positive.

Marissa Mayer, the VP at Google has recently voiced her concern over the deal. She believes that the service provided by other competitors may suffer because of this and that therefore the search engine users themselves will also suffer too. Microsoft and Yahoo! have currently been the biggest competitors to Google in the search engine industry and now that they have combined their powers, there will only be two major competitors in this market. This means that internet users will have less choice when carrying out search queries and that the search engines may not be pushing as hard as normal to deliver the best possible service to internet users because they have the monopoly within the search engine industry already. Mayer suggests that a number of strong competitors is necessary in this business in order for search engines to operate at their best and search engine users to receive the very best service from the search engines.

Teams of workers within Google have now been assigned the project of anticipating and researching the effect of this deal on the company and they are also exploring the effect it is likely to have on all of the internet search industry.

Google is likely to strongly oppose this deal and it will be interesting to see what information and research they use to support this argument. It will also be of interest to see the views of other companies and internet users and whether the majority are for or against this agreement.

The joining of Microsoft and Yahoo! could have a major impact on search engine users and the search engine optimisation techniques used by companies trying to improve their rankings in search engine results and encourage more traffic. We at SEO Consult can help you keep up to date on all the necessary and appropriate techniques to help you run a successful search engine optimisation campaign which will help your business succeed.

Eric Schmidt is known and recognised as the CEO at Google but he has also played an important role as a member on the Board of Directors at Apple Inc. Mr Schmidt joined Google in 2001 and became the chairman of the Board of Directors. He was then appointed as CEO of the company a couple of months later and also became a board member for Apple five years after that in August 2006. However, Mr Schmidt has recently resigned from his position at Apple.

Whilst those at Apple have come out in support of Mr Schmidt and have praised his influence and contribution as a board member, they have agreed that it was the right decision for him to give up his place on the board and therefore his departure is being reported as a mutual decision between Mr Schmidt and the Apple team.

The main reason for this resignation is due to the development of Google into areas already covered by Apple. As Google expand their business, it would have been more likely that there would have been a conflict of interest for Schmidt as CEO of Google and also a board member for Apple. It is likely that he would have had to have been excluded from many of the meetings and developments taking place at Apple because they are now competitors in so many areas of their business. The main area where Apple feels Google is encroaching on their territory is in the mobile phone market. The Google phone uses the Android OS operating system and is viewed as being in direct competition with the iPhone provided by Apple. With further plans from Google to enter other market areas such as into the computer operating system area with Google Chrome OS, Apple was too concerned that the business they are in would be affected too much by this expansion of Google. Therefore, Schmidt was no longer regarded as an appropriate board member.

It is likely that with the further development and success of Google that it will be competing with Apple more and more in the future. By Eric Schmidt taking the decision to resign from his position as a board member at Apple and Apple accepting and encouraging this resignation, Google and Apple have now become established as firm competitors.

Google is undoubtedly the most important company that needs to be considered when carrying out a search engine optimisation campaign. As Google has been so successful in this area and has such a massive amount of the market share, it is now able to expand into other areas of business and be regarded as a fierce competitor in these markets too.

We at SEO Consult know how important it is to be using the right search engine optimisation techniques for your business. By having an effective plan tailored to suit the needs of your company and website perfectly, you can develop a very successful relationship between you and the major search engines such as Google. This can be vital if you are trying to increase the number of visitors to your website.