Bähler has led the company since fall 2010, and during his time as CEO successfully implemented the transformation from a telephone directory provider to a digital platform. His successor will be appointed in the coming weeks, according to a statement. Until that time, the company will continue to be managed by him.

As recently reported by the Annoyance list According to a survey by Consumer Protection, Mr. and Mrs. Swiss were most annoyed in 2015 by annoying calls, which often come at ungodly hours. More and more telemarketing companies are no longer calling with anonymous numbers, as many people don't even answer them, but are instead supposedly identifying themselves. The Android app from Search.ch offers a way to protect yourself from annoying advertising calls (Werbewoche.ch reported).

The top 10 disturbers of the peace

A total of around 1000 call centers are registered with Search.ch. The ten most frequent unwanted callers were searched for almost 1.4 million times in 2015.
 

You are traveling in a foreign city and want to know where the nearest ATM is? Which restaurants and bars are nearby? Or how far it is to the next streetcar stop? Live Search" displays all this and much more quickly and easily on your cell phone. Anyone who uses the new function receives all the important information around them directly on their mobile phone, depending on time and location. Thanks to "Live Search," the big, wide world becomes a little smaller and Switzerland moves closer together. This benefit is illustrated in an "all-round" sympathetic way by the visual guiding idea of the new campaign, which Notch Interactive conceived and realized. The current claim "For everything around you" additionally strengthens the central idea.

The current CEO of Local.ch will take over the management of the joint company at the time of the legal completion of the merger, which is scheduled for mid-2015. In the past four years, Bähler has led a successful transformation process at Local.ch from a former telephone directory provider to a leading digital services company, according to a statement. He will continue on the same path with the two brands local.ch and Search.ch. Urs Hügli, acting CEO of Search.ch, will continue to be available to the new company in an advisory capacity.

Edi Bähler, 53, from Berne, graduated in engineering from ETH Zurich, and earned an MBA from the University of St. Gallen. Bähler was Head of IT and later Head of Marketing & Sales at Mikron, Biel. He then spent four years as CEO at Hofstetter Umwelttechnik before moving to Swisscom Mobile. After building up the marketing department, he took over commercial responsibility for Swisscom Mobile as a member of the Executive Board. As part of the restructuring of Swisscom (Switzerland)'s residential customer business, he was responsible for the entire product performance design. In this role, he also took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Swisscom Directories. With the merger of Swisscom Directories and LTV Yellow Pages under the joint Local.ch brand, Edi Bähler took over overall management as CEO in November 2010.

The plan is to implement the merger by the middle of the year. Swisscom will hold 69 percent and Tamedia 31 percent of the joint company. The two companies will continue to develop their offering into a strong Swiss alternative to global providers of search engines and social networks, as detailed in a press release. Swisscom and Tamedia welcome the Competition Commission's decision and plan to complete the merger by mid-2015. The online platforms local.ch and search.ch will continue to operate as independent offerings.

Swiss alternative to global providers

The merger of Local.ch and Search.ch is intended to create a comprehensive Swiss directory and information platform for private individuals, companies and the public sector and an important advertising partner for Swiss SMEs. Together, the two providers, which compete with international providers such as Google in particular, reach around 3.6 million Internet users in Switzerland every month.

Urs Schaeppi, CEO of Swisscom, is delighted with the positive decision: "The decision takes appropriate account of the international market environment and future developments. Thanks to the merger, together with Tamedia we can build a strong Swiss alternative to international search engines and social networks and develop new, attractive offers for our customers." Christoph Tonini, CEO Tamedia, adds: "Together with Swisscom, we have the opportunity to build a strong Swiss online directory and are thus sending a further signal for the consistent implementation of our digital strategy."

Swisscom has granted Tamedia a right to sell (put option) and Tamedia has granted Swisscom a right to buy (call option) Tamedia's 31 percent stake, both of which can be exercised from the third year after the completion of the transaction at a price in the region of CHF 200 million.
 

The Merger of the internet platforms Local.ch and Search.ch could lead to the subsidiary jointly owned by Swisscom and Tamedia assuming a dominant position in address directories in future. This is the conclusion reached by the Competition Commission. The Federal Competition Commission (ComCo) will therefore examine the merger of the two directory services in greater depth, as the authority announced on Tuesday. According to the Competition Commission, the examination of how the planned merger is likely to affect competition in address directories will be carried out within four months.

Following the takeover of Publigroupe by Swisscom, the telecommunications group and the media company Tamedia would like to merge their address directory businesses. To this end, they are planning to merge Local.ch and Search.ch into a joint subsidiary. Swisscom will hold 69 percent of the share capital and Tamedia 31 percent. They justify the merger of the two directory services with the need to make their businesses more competitive in the area of address and contact data searches in order to be able to compete with Google. Swisscom definitively took over Publigroupe in September. The "blue giant" put 475 million Swiss francs on the table for this (Werbewoche.ch reported). (SDA)

Unwanted phone calls to the mobile phone are annoying. These calls are becoming more frequent, especially before the deadline for switching health insurers. Nowadays, more and more call centers are no longer calling with anonymous numbers, but are supposedly making themselves known, as Search.ch writes in a statement. Thanks to the integrated caller ID of the Search.ch app, even such calls do not go undetected. At the time of the call, the app checks the caller's phone number. If this number is not stored in the smartphone user's personal phone book, the app immediately searches Search.ch's phone book with almost four million entries thanks to the caller ID. The company name is shown on the smartphone display without any time delay.

If the app finds out that the caller is a call center, the ringtone and any vibration set on the smartphone are temporarily suppressed. This prevents unwanted callers from disturbing the user. The deliberately "missed" calls are listed in the smartphone together with their call center designation. To complete the blacklist, unregistered call center numbers can be deleted from the list via a form on Admin.tel.search.ch be transmitted.

The integrated caller ID works with Android smartphones. The Search.ch app is also available for iOS-based smartphones, but this operating system blocks certain permissions that are necessary for caller ID. The suppression of phone numbers requires a mobile data subscription and can be deactivated in the settings at any time.

Symbol image (call center): Keystone