The deal is done and now Microsoft and Yahoo are search engine partners.
Yes Microsoft’s long bid for Yahoo has ended with a deal that will give the software giant ownership of the Yahoo search function which will now be powered by Microsoft’s newly released search engine Bing.
The deal apparently permits Yahoo to keep selling advertisement and to keep 88 percent of ad revenues. Microsoft, looking at the long term, gets what they were after in that they will get all the data collected during online searches. That data will allow Microsoft to provide the most relevant advertisement possible by providing Microsoft information on what users are searching for and purchasing.
Ironically the real company in Microsoft’s crosshairs is Goggle the search engine giant that currently holds over 65 percent of the online search market. The Microsoft Yahoo deal will make Microsoft’s Bing an instant challenger to Google by increasing Bing’s market share from 10 percent to about 30 percent.
So what does this mean for users? Well, for business users, who purchase advertisement from either Yahoo or Microsoft this is probably a very good thing. They should see an increase in advertisement coverage and placement. Search users may not get such a good deal.
Blind searches in Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo can pull very different results which in many ways are to the benefit of the user. By eliminating the Yahoo search, users have one less trustable search source.
The real surprise in the deal is that it will be Microsoft’s Bing technology which will be driving Yahoo and not the other way around. Microsoft has always lagged behind Yahoo in online searches and users in general have found Microsoft’s search engine attempts to be the least reliable of the big three search engines.
What will ultimately be the result of the Microsoft Yahoo search engine merger? No one can really say for sure, but there is no doubt that everyone will be watching and waiting to see what will happen. One thing that is for sure is that Microsoft has finally got what they wanted in the Yahoo deal, and you have to believe that Microsoft plans to capitalize on it.