Microsoft, Yahoo deal approved by US and EU

[Matthew DeCarlo]

It's been around six months since Microsoft and Yahoo announced their 10-year search alliance, and the European Commission along with the US Department of Justice have authorized the deal.

The agreement will better position both companies against Google, the search industry's dominating force. According to comScore, Americans used Google for almost 66% of their 14.7 billion core searches in December, while Yahoo and Microsoft combined accounted for 28%.

"Once the transition is completed, the companies' unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries," the companies said in a joint statement.

The companies will begin in a few days by transitioning algorithmic and paid search platforms, which they intend to complete by the end of 2010. They hope to make significant progress transitioning advertisers before this holiday season, but it could be bumped into 2011. The move should be finished by early 2012.

The companies will detail their progress and provide updates for partners and users at searchalliance.com.

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[poundsmack]

this is a sad day...

Wish Ask looking for a buyer and Yahoo now just using Bing the "real" search competition has been reduced to 2 players, google and bing. There are things i find on yahoo that i cant find in bing or google (and vise versa of course). We are now left with one less choice, and personally i am not all that thrilled with google (good results but i have a grudge against the company, or any company that acts like your friend till it consumes you while your sleeping), and Bings results or often almost useless to me. Bing probably works fine for most people but if i am searching for something online its often something that is tricky to find, and bing fails me there most of the time.

Yahoo had so many things going for it, and I love Jboss and some of their other search related projects.

all in all, it just bothers me. The EU especially disappoints me here. They make this big stink about requiring options for things like web broswers and what not, but they have no problem allowing the search competition to be reduced to (essentially) 2 players?

....if anyone needs me i'll be in the angry dome (grumble mumble rant grumble)... http://theangrydome.ytmnd.com/