I Bing. Yahoo, Do You?

After several false starts, today Microsoft and Yahoo announced a 10 year deal which will see Microsoft power Yahoo search while Yahoo will “become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers,” according to a joint statement released by both companies. This new agreement is expected to go into effect sometime in 2010.

Bing Search Engine

Yahoo

According to both companies, this deal will allow Microsoft to incorporate Yahoo’s search technology, but both companies will be using Microsoft’s AdCenter sales tool and the new Bing search engine to power both sites.

While this deal is far from the previous bid by Microsoft to purchase Yahoo outright for $44 billion, it is designed to allow Yahoo to reduce costs and increase income by about $500 million, while clearly establishing Bing as the number 2 search engine behind Google.

With this deal we will see the loss of Yahoo Search, which for the last several years was the 2nd most popular search engine, but was recently overtaken with the recent launch of Bing. This new consolidation will now give Bing roughly 30% of the market share for search, which should make the combined paid search program more attractive for advertisers. While Google is still the reigning and undefeated king of search, this deal clearly defines the only contender to compete for this title.

As this deal gets closer to fruition and implementation, look to WebRanking’s Search Marketing blog to keep you updated on new developments and how this agreement will affect your search marketing strategies.

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