ANNOUNCING, BINGHOO!
Yahoo! has thrown in the towel and entered into an agreement with Microsoft to use Bing as the search engine across all Yahoo sites, whilst being the paid search sales force for Bing.
It’s an acknowledgment that separately they are not threat to Google, but by combining Bing’s superior search technology and desire to innovate, with Yahoo’s established search marketing salesforce around the globe, they might have a chance.
The details of the deal go like this:
- The deal is for 10 years
- Microsoft will license Yahoo’s core search technologies for 10 years
- Bing is the “exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites’
- Yahoo is the worldwide sales force for both companies. Self-serve and search advertising will be built on Microsoft’s AdCenter platform.
Implementation will take 2 years, and it is still subject to regulatory approval (but no one seems too worried about that, given Google’s dominance).
Check out Wired’s coverage for some analysis on how Yahoo risks becoming just like AOL.
For Australian users, there won’t be a huge change. We currently advertise on both Yahoo and Bing through the one platform. Bing’s a better search experience than the old Live search, but it may not be different enough from Google to be able to grow the share of search queries in this market.
