Marketing Pilgrim

Stacy (YHOO) gazed at the single white rose. The diamond tennis bracelet. The silver Porsche 911 997 GT2 topped by a red bow and an oversized tag reading “I’M SORRY.” She turned to Brad (MSFT). “Oh, Brad,” she gushed, a tear in her eye. “It’s all so . . . meaningful.”

“Yes, Stacy.” Brad smiled and pulled out his PDA. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.”

Yes, folks, we had to revive the award-winning* daytime drama*, the Young and the Profitless, for one last hurrah when sources tell BoomTown that talks between Yahoo and Microsoft have grown “meaningful.”

Last reported as “hot and heavy,” the merger talks between the two companies have continued to pick up. Another source says, like Brad, that it’s really not a question of if: “We’re finally talking about the how rather than the if.”

I can’t quite figure out why the Federal Trade Commission has decided to investigate Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s role on the boards of both Google and Apple.

Is the government truly trying to find a way to bring antitrust charges against Google? It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?

Or, is this simply the FTC "going through the motions" so as to appease those that feel Google’s too dominant, while using a platform–Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act–that’s rarely enforced?

I’m leaning towards the latter, for a number of reasons.

First, Eric Schmidt was recently named to President’s Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Sure, Obama wants to send a message that there are no "free passes" in his administration, but forcing Schmidt off the Apple board is hardly a victory for those against corporate conspiracies.

So while we don’t look like we play along when the rumor mill gets started there is ‘talk’ that Apple is looking to purchase Twitter. Of course, it seems like everyone would like to purchase Twitter but there’s the sticky detail of Twitter saying yes that seems to elude most.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington sums it up here

Rumors popped up that Apple may be looking to buy Twitter. “Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up.

As I looked through the Wall Street Journal this morning I noticed the headline that said “Decline in Ad Spending Quickens Pace at 9.2%” and figured that this latest doom and gloom was not a surprise but certainly not welcomed either. Guess what though? If you read the article itself (how many of you really do that now, be honest) you will see that the headline screams one thing while the data may say another. Not a surprise when it comes to market research and the like. This one though was more troubling.

The article was about a report that TNS Media Intelligence, an ad-tracking firm owned by WPP PLC, released. Ok that’s fine but the data was about the 4th quarter of 2008. Last time I checked my calendar we are approaching the middle of Q2 ’09 so even numbers from Q1 ’09 are starting to look a little stale.

Google acquired Urchin and has offered its free analytics software for three and a half years. Microsoft first started promising a challenger back in 2007, but shuttered the beta in February.

But Yahoo has been a little slow on this front. Although they acquired analytics company IndexTools just over a year ago, and rumor has it Yahoo’s version is better than Google’s, they still have yet to offer it to the general public.

But last week, that started to change. Yahoo! Web Analytics will be available to Yahoo advertisers:

If you’re an advertiser in need of some serious analytics, you’ve probably been watching for our Yahoo! Web Analytics enterprise tool—and you’ll be glad to know that it’s now available for free to search and display advertisers supported by a Yahoo! account team.

Poor Google. It seems just about anything it puts together becomes fair game to hackers and manipulators.

While the search engine spends its day keeping spam out of its web index, it’s apparently unable to prevent Google Trends from being gamed. As Andrew Girdwood spotted, a recent "hot" keyword on Google Trends was nothing but one big joke!

Have you spotted any other funny keywords on Google Trends?