The Microsoft-Yahoo stage show is in a hiatus and Microsoft wants to spend the money. That’s how all seems like. Microsoft has acquired Greenfield Online, the owner of ciao.com for a stunning $486 million. Ciao is a popular price comparison website on the European market.

Microsoft’s long wait and dream to buy Yahoo failed early this year and it had $47.5 billion left out which made its wallet heavy. That’s how Microsoft got into this shopping spree.

This acquisition would be a huge benefit for Microsoft as Ciao reportedly has more than 26 million unique visitors each month and has over 5 million product reviews. However, business analysts feel the money paid out is more than it is worth for.

Ever since Google captured the internet and not just dominated but also started ruling over it, Microsoft, the once big giant has been on acquisition one after another to get back its lost kingdom. But would this strategy work out?

Yahoo Inc. would be moving its Eurpopean headquarters located in London to Switzerland within 18 months. The search giant headquarters would now be near the shores of Lake Geneva.

This move would consist of a 5% work force move and is a part of its ongoing international business stratergy to deliver better financial results, increase its performance and efficiencies and to increase its competitiveness.

It should be noted that Yahoo Inc competitor Google Inc recently opened up their new European Research and Development center in Zurich.

Yahoo! Co-founder and the fifth-biggest stakeholder lost half a billion dollars losing investor confidence with the company losing out to competitors and reduction of employees.

Jerry Yang took over as the search giant’s Chief Executive officer in June last year. With a 4 percent stock in Yahoo, Yang has been experiencing the pain in the reducing stock by about a third to $1 billion in the past seven months. Yahoo! further dropped 8.5% in the end of January 2008. The 39-year-old CEO along with his co-founder, David Filo got into the billionaire ranks in 1999 with Yahoo! shares rising up threefolds.

With Yahoo hitting a four year low, Microsoft has eyed on the search engine giant and one of the early pioneers of Internet search, Yahoo Inc. Sources estimate a whooping $50 billion price tag on this weakening Giant.

It should be noted that Microsoft had once negotiated and this is not the first time. Microsoft is now more willing and ready to pay more for this deal. Read More »