The Million Dollar Question: Details of the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal
Okay, so you’re ready to get into the details of the Microsoft/Yahoo! deal and finally answer the million dollar question (or hundreds of millions of dollars in deal terms): What does this mean for me? Well…as an advertiser it really doesn’t mean anything right now since the search/listings side of the deal isn’t reported to come about until 2012. However, as a web user searching the Internet at Yahoo!’s site, it will be powered by Microsoft technology within a year or so.
Confused yet? The search engines have basically combined in order to share all kinds of normally proprietary information, like technology development, in a 10-year exclusive rights agreement. The sums haven’t been reported, but word on the street is that money will be gained along the ten years that the agreement exists, according to an established baseline. Guesstimates have ranged from $200 - $700 million dollars at signing, with more to come each year of the agreement. Talk about a corporate bailout! But we digress…
You may be scratching your head and asking “Whyyyyy did they do this?” If you guessed to give Google something to be concerned about, you’re correct. The way that Microsoft and Yahoo! see it is that there is safety in numbers, and although they may be competitors they know that the way to get an edge up on the biggest name in search is to play nice with each other.
The realities of the deal are that both companies want the chance to explore their individual technologies and put their brains together to come up with a truly stellar search engine. For the next ten years you can trust that NetSearch Direct will be watching to see what two of the three largest search engines can come up with – and we’ll be reporting it here.
f you’d like to do some more reading on the merger, check out this quick conversation-style article by David Sullivan, a trusted name in the search biz: http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-yahoo-search-deal-simplified-23299