Yahoo! and Microsoft have finalised the terms of their search agreement, five months after announcing the deal. The two technology companies have sealed the terms of a landmark search deal which will see Microsoft’s Bing power Yahoo!’ search engine. In return Yahoo! will be responsible for selling advertising around the combined search efforts. The companies today released a joint statement: “Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.
“Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”
However, despite having ‘finalised and executed’ the terms of the deal, the companies are still awaiting approval from the Department of Justice in the US and then the European Union to clear the deal and allay any competition concerns. This is not expected to happen until an unconfirmed date in 2010. Last month Yahoo! filed a statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which gave the first indication that the approval process has taken longer than both parties had originally predicted.
Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo! search are pooling their efforts in order to try and take on the dominance of Google in the search market. According to Net Applications’ most recent global figures, Google accounted for 85 per cent of all searches, while Bing took 3.3 per cent share and Yahoo! search accounted for 6.22 per cent of the total market.
Content courtesy of The Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/6752383/Yahoo-and-Microsoft-cement-10-year-search-deal.html