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Carl Icahn Ups Stake In WebMD

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:01:38 +0000

Carl Icahn has upped his stake in WebMD. He now owns 13.12% in WebMD, which is up from 11.64%. He paid $203.2 million for the additional shares. Icahn increased his stake after WebMD decided in January not to sell itself off anymore.

On Tuesday, WebMD announced that they would buyback shares as part of a $150 million worth of stock in a Dutch tender offer. The program collected 18 million shares (10% of outstanding shares) for $26 each.

This price is higher than where WebMD has trade since late February. WebMD’s offer was not what Icahn pictured. He proposed a buyback of up to $1 billion worth of shares at a high price point of $30.

[NYT]

TripAdvisor, Yelp, CitySearch, and WebMD Not Thrilled By How Google Displays Links

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:57:19 +0000

When you search for a local venue, hotel, information about a city, or even a health condition on Google.com, you may find a result from Google.com itself at the very top. TripAdvisor, Yelp, CitySearch, and WebMD are not happy with the way that the links are displayed. With Google.com being the top result, it makes it even more of a challenge for the aforementioned websites to compete for ad revenue.

“There is no denying that today Google is competing [with many websites] for the same Web traffic and the same advertising dollars,” stated CityGrid CEO Jay Herratti. Traffic to TripAdvisor.com has been dropped by about 10% on a seasonally adjusted basis since mid-October due to the shift in Google’s displayed links. These complaints also showcase how much Google search is important for almost every business online. I can empathize with some of these businesses since about 55% of our visits are from search engines.

The European Union is now working on a formal investigation on whether Google is manipulating search results for their own advantage. Google said that they have never intentionally intended to hurt competing services. They also said that the complaints to the EU were led by companies with ties to Microsoft.

[WSJ]

Microsoft to Buy Health Search Engine, Medstory Inc.

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:24:31 +0000

Today it was announced that Microsoft Corporation has hinted at becoming more active in the healthcare sector by possibly acquiring Medstory Inc. Medstory is a health search engine start-up in Foster City, CA. Medstory’s search software algorithms revolve around an ability to detect medical and health-related articles within Internet medical journals, government documents, and also the newly featured Wall Street Journal and Breastcancer.org articles.

This acquisition also indicates Microsoft’s intention to “improve the consumer experience in health care” stated Peter Neupert, VP of Health Strategy at Microsoft. “Search is a critical part of that better end-to-end experience for consumers.”

So, who is the competition? RevolutionHealth.com is a competitor and is backed by Steve Case, former chairman & also the co-founder of America Online. WebMD is one of the conglomerates out there right now that has a market cap of $3.05 billion and has made an annual revenue of $253 mill this past year.

Google is also another player in the field. “Using the Google Co-op platform, Google and the health community have labeled sites and pages across the web making it easier for users to refine their health queries and locate the medical information they need” wrote Adam Bosworth on the Google Blog.

From first-hand experiences, I believe that many people do not understand the importance of technology and its contribution to healthcare until they know someone who has been diagnosed with a disease or shows irregular symptoms. For example, I had a relative get a call this past weekend from the Er because he had high potassium levels. So the first place we turned was WebMD to see what could alleviate the high potassium levels.

I believe that there is a correlation between this news and the regular announcements made by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I also believe this would be one of Microsoft’s smartest acquisitions compared to some of their previous.