Rumour has it that Microsoft is to buy Yahoo! Funny enough, we were talking about this in our startup office some days ago. When I mentioned how the parking service ParkedNames.com was shut down by Yahoo! Peter said: “Maybe Yahoo! is preparing to be bought by Microsoft”.

ParkedNames issued this short statement: “Yahoo! and Google do not see the value in domain traffic and are making a slow but certain move away from supporting domain monetization.” If you consider the termination of Klickerz by Skenzo (which mainly uses a Google feed) and the earlier split between DomainSponsor and TrafficClub (TrafficClub was sharing DomainSponsor’s feed), this might just be a sign of the times to come (the cold war against domain traffic).

A quote from the Bloomberg article on the possible purchase of Yahoo!:

“It’s all about the battle for the advertisement market. Who will be the dominant force on the Internet,” said Wim Zwanenburg, who helps oversee 27 billion Euros at Bank Degroof Group, including Microsoft shares. “Microsoft won’t be able to catch up with Google on its own. If you want to play a role, you’ll have to gain market share and conquer a position.”

So if the advertising market is all that matters, why neglect the value of domain traffic, direct navigation or direct search (whatever you want to call it)? Do we really want trademark-infringements and badly executed arbitrage to drag down our entire industry? While domainers might be used to working “underground” in the past, the time has come to show that this is a legitimate industry which already provides tremendous value to the search, internet and advertising market today. Do we want to gamble on the possibility that the power of our traffic is strong enough to validate and secure our existence, or should we join forces (for example in the Internet Commerce Association) to create a common voice that speaks for all of us?

[via SevenMile]