Search Deal Approved

[arizonadude]

It's game on :)

The U.S. Justice Department and the European Union have approved a deal in which Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. would combine their Web search operations, the companies said Thursday. In a joint statement, the two companies said they expect to complete the transitioning of Yahoo's search activities to Microsoft by the end of 2010, but some advertising partners may not be moved over until the following year. All customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

[marketwatch.com...]

[edited by: engine at 5:48 pm (utc) on Feb 18, 2010]
[edit reason] added quote [/edit]

[engine]

Microsoft-Yahoo search deal approved [news.bbc.co.uk]

Microsoft's plans to buy Yahoo's internet search and search advertising businesses have been cleared by both European and US regulators.

The European Commission ruled that the deal "would not significantly impede effective competition".

Under the deal, Yahoo's website will use Microsoft's Bing search engine, and the two firms will share the revenues.

[fashezee]

When will bing results show on yahoo?

[engine]

There's some great information on the Search Alliance site.

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance [advertising.microsoft.com]

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

[Hugene]

Just great, Yahoo is dead and is now part of the M$ machine.

Also great way to fight a monopoly, by reducing competition and creating a duo-poly. Duo-polies are the worst way of managing things: just look at Intel-AMD, Republicans-Democrats, etc...

[pdivi]

I'm happy about this. According to the trendline, Yahoo was a goner...at least this way their market share will stay out of G's hands.

According to an email I just received, ad management will transition to adCenter. I'm really hoping Microsoft improves the interface before this happens. It needs some work!

[spintraffic]

I heard that they're keeping the Yahoo Search User interface, which I think is ten times better than AdCenter.

Can anyone confirm that?

[arieng]

Just received an email from Microsoft stating that Ad Center would be the platform of the future.

[jgold454]

When will bing SERPS be live on Yahoo?

[spintraffic]

I got the same email about AdCenter being the new platform.

That SUCKS!

Panama is 10 times better than AdCenter. Plus, we use the Yahoo API to manage search and AdCenter's API is still in Beta and we don't even have it.

[drall]

Finally! We do quite well in Bing and outperform with them vs Yahoo so it will be a nice change to see the Bing algo serve in Yahoo for search.

We should yield a 40% increase in our overall traffic. Be nice to look at the log and see a single source sending at least half of what Google does which isnt shabby since we do quite well in Google :)

[J_RaD]

craaaaap yea i like the yahoo interface better then adcenter.

but MS really wants you to download the adcenter desktop app which I did and found it kinda hard to find what you are looking for.

[nomis5]

The following quote from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8522606.stm) about the deal just about sums it up.

However, technology analyst Chris Green of DMG Europe, said Microsoft had little hope of making much of a dent in Google's search engine dominance.
"This deal gives Microsoft a bigger slice of the internet advertising business, but it is still miles and miles behind Google," he said.
"Microsoft's Bing is technically a very good search engine, but no-one uses it, and it doesn't currently make a profit.
"The deal with Yahoo should turn it into a not-too-shabby and profitable world number two search engine. But still no Google."

Really a sad deal between two "also rans" in the search engine business.

[pdivi]

a sad deal between two "also rans"

I disagree. Bing + Yahoo + Facebook + Google's hubris = a shift...especially if Google keeps trampling, fumbling and otherwise making new enemies. It will be an interesting year in search.

[canuck]

From the email they sent out it seems they're "hoping" to have this rolled out for the Christmas spending season later this year in the USA... with additional countries coming online in 2011.

[Receptional]

Well I'm excited. I would rather have two players than one. In the US you might think there's still some mileage in Yahoo search. Also in Japan. For the other 4 Billion people on the planet, the choice was really just shades of Google. Not that this was bad, but you need to keep them on their toes :)

I think the game changer is Facebook, though. (That and great photography on Bing's homepage.)

[JS_Harris]

I'm in awe at the lost potential in the Yahoo! camp, indecision, fumbling and lack of growth minded leadership seems to haunt them at every step.

I'd be embarrassed to put "Former Yahoo exec" on my resume now, wow.

[drall]

Im with pdivi on this one. Going to be a very fun year, finally some change. Reminds me a little of the late 90s type of feeling, you know back when you used to check your logs and see traffic from tons of search engines instead of a couple.

Can MS unseat Google? Nope
Can webmasters shift away from Google crack rapidly? Yep
Can Google hurt MS business in any tangible way? Nope
Can MS hurt Googles business in any tangible way? Yep
If ever unseated would MS stick it to us all like Google does? Yep
Do I like peanuts? Yep

[potentialgeek]

So this means no YPN for foreign publishers? D@mn! lol.

I don't care if MSN keeps the Yahoo! interface as long as they don't use Yahoo's useless search algo. Yahoo banned my top site for no good reason a few years ago, and so this day is one that brings me great pleasure.

Yahoo was one of the internet's biggest successes and then one of its biggest failures.

[blend27]

Can MS unseat Google? Well if it keeps going this way with the Privacy thingy - one after another - Then Maybe
Do I like peanuts? Yep, Solty ones with Brew!

[J_RaD]

i wish there were more search start ups, as im glad to see google finally getting a punch in the gut and only wish them the worst I also don't want it to come to a world where we only have 2 engines.

[arizonadude]

I hope Adcenter keeps the ability of blocking specific sites on the partner network which you can't do now in Adcenter.

[walkman]

And to think that MSFT at some point offered Yahoo over $40 Billion! Search was the key, the rest of the Y! content is largely duplicated by msn.com

[JS_Harris]

And to think that MSFT at some point offered Yahoo over $40 Billion! Search was the key, the rest of the Y! content is largely duplicated by msn.com

The majority of the content provided by all search engines is duplicated, some of it even scraped from blogs and friend of a friend type sites nobody's heard of before.

A sobering thought, are we headed to a future where there is only one major engine and it decides to provide its own content instead of ranking 3rd party sites? The face of the net would be changed, for a while at least, until new engines spring up that don't ignore 3rd party sites.

I believe law should force browsers to offer an easy way for the end user to pick which search company they want to use and make it easy to switch at any time. When installing a browser there should be no default and instead just a list of options that includes all search companies.

I'd also like to see a major search company that's not on Wall st and is run by someone only interested in the health of the net and not the companies pocketbook but alas...

[Edge]

Interesting, I was using GG, YPN, and MSN ad networks on my site. MSN ad network was paying good until Bing showed up. I suspect Bing took all of the good paying ads. I wonder how the payout from YPN is going to affected..

I don't see an upside for publishers or advertisers - not enough big and hungry competitors.

[arizonadude]

I believe law should force browsers to offer an easy way for the end user to pick which search company they want to use and make it easy to switch at any time.

You mean easier than opening tools, internet options and setting the home page?

How much hand holding should be provided for people? What, is there a law against thinking anymore?

Just what we need, more stupid laws.

[albo]

Hear, hear, JS_Harris! Safari has always made it entirely difficult to install any search but the Gorg, requiring the geek user to find and install an add-in.

First it was Inquisitor. Then, with a later release of Safari, Inquisitor bit the dust, and now Glims serves. But I suspect, not *all* Safari users are willing to go the extra mile to fetch the add-on to allow for broad search-engine choice.

[subhankar ray]

Yahoo stock price is not showing a lot of movement. I thought they got a sweet deal from MSFT.

[trakkerguy]

Any talk of when we might start seeing yahoo results powered by bing?

[jgold454]

I also am curious when yahoo will start serving bing results. Is there any approximate timeline published anywhere regarding this?