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Yahoo! and Microsoft Finally Team Up for Mega Search

by Leila Brillson on July 29, 2009 at 11:10 AM


In a move to compete with Google, lesser search providers Yahoo! and Microsoft yesterday inked a 10-year agreement to combine their search powers. Microsoft's Bing, the Redmond-based company's latest foray into the search market, will be powering Yahoo!'s search engine, and, in turn, Yahoo! will sell ads. The combined companies' research-and-development teams might actually make a legitimate pass at Google's dominance -- and hopefully a useful tool in the process.

During the first five years of the deal, Yahoo! will get to keep 88-percent of the ad revenue from its own search sites and will be able to sell ads on certain Microsoft Web sites, as well, becoming the exclusive force behind Microsoft's advertising sales initiatives. The Bing algorithm will be used then for Yahoo! search, which is the second largest search engine in the world. However, as blogger Kara Swisher points out, no comment has been made on whether or not Yahoo! search will be marked as 'powered by Bing.'

The deal is a surprise to no one, especially since Microsoft has been courting Yahoo! since 2005. In a joint statement, the companies seem to believe this union changes the future of search; smart kid Microsoft will be able to focus on creating strong technology, the salesman Yahoo! can work on revenue, and both of the well-monied parties will have the resources to fund further research. (TechCrunch suggests this deal indicates that Yahoo! has given up on search entirely.) Advertisers have been hungry for a legitimate Google competitor, and they seem to be in support of this union, reports AdAge.

ReadWriteWeb laments the loss of innovative Yahoo! initiatives, like the book-marking tool Delicious and the development of the Yahoo! Location Database. Since Yahoo! seems to no longer be thinking about search, will these projects fall by the wayside, too? With the improved search quality, advertising, and research that this new union will certainly bring, is the megalith of Google in trouble? We'll have to wait and see -- and for a while, at that. As TechCrunch's Robin Wauters points out, 10 years, in Internet time, is an eternity. [From: Reuters, TechCrunch, Yahoo!, AdAge, AllThingsDigital and ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: bing, google, microsoft, news, search, search engine, SearchEngine, top, yahoo

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