Rumor: Microsoft will Buy Facebook

Rumor: Microsoft will Buy Facebook
WHY SHOULD MICROSOFT BUY FACEBOOK WHEN WWW.YANDEX.COM IS THE BETTER VAULE LOOK BELOW 47% OF THE SEARCH MARKET IN RUSSIA AND 2.2. OVER YAHOO AND MICROSOFT JUST MAKES SENSE TO BUY THIS FIRST AND THEN GO BUY FACEBOOK OR YAHOO AND COMBINE THEM

Russia’s leading search engine, Yandex, is set for a massive IPO this fall according to a report from Reuters. The site claims approximately 47% of the search market in Russia (Google is second), with revenues of $167 million last year. Yakov over at Quintura notes that the company has about 2.2% of the total European search market, which beats both Yahoo and Microsoft.

The IPO would reportedly raise $2 billion for Yandex and value the company at $5 billion. That may seem aggressive, but dominant Chinese search engine Baidu trades at similarly lofty levels – 43x sales at today’s closing price of $372/share. Investors see dollar signs when a search player dominates a market in the way that Google dominates the US, and hence the interest in buying up shares of companies like Baidu and Yandex.

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