Yahoo! search engine bought by Web 1 Marketing, Inc.

Posted by Josh on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009.

Seattle, WA (AFNews) April 1, 2009 — Web 1 Marketing, Inc. has purchased the web search business of Yahoo!, Inc.

“We are pleased to welcome Yahoo! Search to our team,” said Josh Freedman, President of Web 1 Marketing, Inc. “We look forward to the synergies of our two organizations to combine effortlessly, providing our customers and searchers around the globe with unparalleled levels of service.”

Rumors of a deal have been circulating for more than a year since before Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo! was rebuffed. “The recent decline in Yahoo! market share and ad revenues, coinciding with the recent economic downturn, made this too good an opportunity to pass up,” said Freedman.

Financial details have not been disclosed, although Web 1 Marketing, Inc. has described it as an “all cash” deal.

“Obviously our near term priorities are to do everything we can to make the union as seamless as possible for our clients, Yahoo! users, and advertisers,” said Freedman. Other near term priorities include dramatic improvements to the advertising management systems, launch of an experimental search engine at www.search1marketing.com which incorporate ESP to improve search results, and complete removal of the exclamation point (!) from all branding.

Web 1 Marketing clients will benefit greatly from this purchase as they will be immediately be ranked at the top of all relevant search results pages, and their advertising will be free of charge.

Some privacy advocates have expressed concern about the ESP features of the experimental search engine, but Web 1 Marketing representatives anticipated our questions (somehow), indicating that the sensing features are still very limited in their capabilities and already incorporate filters on adult and non-politically-correct language.