Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape
It’s Official!
SUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA — 29 July, 2009 — Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.
For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft’s competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.
Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world’s favorite online destinations and Web products.
“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz. “Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities, and mobile experiences.”
hope yahoo won’t be sybase no.2
Hi,
Today I read this in a newspaper. This deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies.
This means that Yahoo! and Microsoft are committed to depriving Yahoo!’s loyal visitors of a search technology they have trusted and relied upon for years — a technology that Yahoo! has simply failed to leverage to inflate page views the way Google has leveraged its own technology to inflate page views.
This is all about page views — increasing the number of times visitors see advertisements.
Apparently, they are hoping to draw in more advertisers, who will then bid up the costs of acquiring traffic from the combined advertising networks.
There is nothing consumer- business-friendly in this deal. It’s not going to change the balance of power in the search industry today.
It will probably reduce the amount of search referral traffic many sites receive from Yahoo!, as such sites perform better in Yahoo! than in Bing. On the other side, some sites will definitely see a rise in traffic as they perform better in Bing than in Yahoo!. But overall fewer sites will benefit from a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance than from both services remaining independent.
Yahoo! has bought search brands in the past: AllTheWeb, Goto/Overture, Altavista. All lost their market share and relevance and none really did anything to help Yahoo! stay on top.
Microsoft will gain more in the long run than Yahoo!, but Google will probably gain the most out of this sham of a deal.
Does that mean that Bing will be no more? Or are their going to be two search engines?
Microsoft + Yahoo talks have been going on for so long that when something finally happened most are like who cares? That aside I am a fan on the new Bing search. Maybe Microsoft finally “gets” it. Be interested in seeing what else comes down the pipe.
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I think that union of Microsoft and Yahoo in search engine market could bring benefits to common search engine users. Google maybe will get some competition at last. And some competition always makes something good for development. I hope that we all will benefit from this and new search engine will become really popular. I would also say that I like Google a lot and I can’t say the same thing about Microsoft or Yahoo but I hope they will convince me to give them a chance
I just hope that the new search engine will not become as successful as Vista 
Wait a minute, are you saying there are other search engines besides Google?
I really hope the Yahoo and Microsoft marriage works well and we can finally see some (genuine) competition for Google.
Do you think Yahoo will stop supporting site explorer when its results are powered by Bing?
Alex, Bing looks like a cool search facility. Certainly looks alot better than Cuil.
This association and agreement between these two strong companies will significantly accelerate and improve the business many of us. I used Google for a long time but I always want better.
I like this news. I hope the two companies would create a good synergy.
Hi Darin, finally Microsoft and Yahoo! came to some accommodation. Was it really all that necessary for those months of posturing and wrangling and watching Jerry yang make a mess of things and Yahoo! stock values plummet. I mean what was that all for?
It’s finally done. It will be interesting to see if this really makes a difference. I think MSN’s relaunch of BING is much more important.
I like this article. I hope the two companies would create a good synergy.
I really hope this works out, its about time someone can google a good run for its money.
That came to me as a surprise especially after when there was some talk going on for takeovers and Yahoo rejected it. I think they both have realized that to rival Google, they need to have some powerful ideas and if MS and Yahoo both work together, they can really find a way. Bing is also getting very good.
With Microsoft’s help can Yahoo overtake Google as the no 1 search engine in the world? I think not unless they create a new algorithm that will beat Google’s.
Geez Google just updated their algorithm lets see if Yahoo and MS can catch up.
There’s a lot of improvements in msn and yahoo. I like those features added.
Microsoft had to show some return for their monumental efforts over the past few years to work with Yahoo…and since “Bing” has been a dismal rollout, I’m sure they’re hoping this might keep their names in the news for a little while…..while Google and Facebook plan to rule and run the social network and search dimensions of the Net for the forseeable future….
From the look of things Microsoft and Yahoo had probably get used to the idea that Goggle will be the future of search for the foreseeable future.
With the introduction of Sidewiki and Goggle Wave, Goggle is going places that other search engines have not even begun to dream abut yet and that my friends is why Goggle is number one and will remain number for for a long long time.
Not only is Goggle always creating new ways of doing things, the new things they create are actually useful most of the time.
Yahoo can be comforted that they are paired with the greatest software company in the world and the pairing will probably work quite well for both of them. I can see a future where Yahoo will automatically be the startup page of Internet Explorer when you install versions of windows but then the only thing I use IE for is to download Firefox, hehe.
With that said Yahoo does have its uses and I sometimes use their search engine. And Microsoft, I use a ton of their products, Windows, Office, OneNote, Need I say more?
OneNote and Word have done more to help me with my business than any software in the history of computing has done. So I’m thinking Microsoft will be the number one software and OS supplier for a long time to come as well.
Great article, keep it up!
Yahoo have started advertising a lot here in the UK so. Hopefully they will gain a new following.
I believe that Microsoft has alot of potential that it uses and with both Yahoo! and MS having their reputations fractured because of their recent very poor policies and decisions, it could be a deal which could make their way into market again. Google is still the best but I think if MS and Yahoo both bring up their experience, it will be wonderful for the users.
A lot of improvements has been done,i hope this will work for them but Google has got so much traffic and it will take time to beat Google.
I switched to Bing from Google and although it took a bit of getting used to I quickly became a fan. Now that the link up with Yahoo has come and our company has joined Microsoft ads, I am sure we will go from strength to strength with this powerful source
I think it is a real chance for google to think about competition. I want to see a competition among them as it will make better search results.
I can’t wait for MS/Yahoo to get their act together. what is taking so long? Google is too arrogant and needs a real competitor. I also would like a viable alternative to Google AdWords / AdSense. I hope this gets launched over the winter months.
I remember reading this about 6 months ago in the local newspaper, doesn’t seem like the yahoo and microsoft team up even came close to Google – it is still early though but I do not see them competing against Google at all when it comes to a search engine, email, or maps.
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Yeah this would be good, i’d really like to see somebody take on google and see if they can do better than them!