{"id":1667,"date":"2009-07-29T14:55:43","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T13:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1667-microsoft-yahoo-search-deal-22-makes-5-or-3.html"},"modified":"2009-07-29T14:55:43","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T13:55:43","slug":"microsoft-yahoo-search-deal-22-makes-5-or-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1667-microsoft-yahoo-search-deal-22-makes-5-or-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft – Yahoo search deal: 2+2 makes 5, or 3?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u2019s search deal with Yahoo<\/a> makes more sense than the attempted full acquisition last year. The 10-year deal provides for Microsoft\u2019s Bing to become the back-end search engine for Yahoo, while Yahoo becomes the exclusive sales force for premium search advertisers on both Bing and Yahoo.<\/p>\n

Listening to today\u2019s conference call<\/a>, the rationale for the deal seems to be like this:<\/p>\n

Maintaining a search engine is expensive. Yahoo has no appetite for it. So Yahoo saves some cash (in fact, makes some cash) while no longer having that cost burden.<\/p>\n

On Microsoft\u2019s side, it is convinced (probably rightly) that large scale is mandatory in order to compete with Google. As Ballmer put it:<\/p>\n

the more searches you serve, the more you learn about what people search for and click on<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I was researching Bing, I was told that some of Bing\u2019s features only work if there is sufficiently high usage. You cannot identify patterns of usage without a certain volume of data, which is easy to get for the most common searches, but not so much for those that are more specialist. The long tail applies \u2013 there are lots of niche searches.<\/p>\n

The value of the data goes beyond search. Search and browsing patterns must enable some remarkable insights into human behaviour, which can inform product development.<\/p>\n

A more humdrum fact is that advertisers like large audiences, and the combined search platform may appeal to some advertisers who would otherwise pass it by.<\/p>\n

Microsoft is therefore relying on the combined value of the two companies\u2019 search businesses being more than the sum of their individual values.<\/p>\n

There is a risk though, which is that some users who like Yahoo\u2019s current search engine may not like Bing so much. If they perceive Yahoo search as merely Microsoft search rebranded, they might jump ship, most likely to Google.<\/p>\n

Still, you have to believe in your product. In theory, both companies could benefit from stronger search results and features.<\/p>\n

It is important not to forget the context. Google is utterly dominant in search; this is two smaller players struggling to remain relevant in that market. I hope Yah-Bing succeeds because competition is good but the chances are that Google will sail on unperturbed.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: yahoo<\/a>,microsoft<\/a>,google<\/a>,bing<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft\u2019s search deal with Yahoo makes more sense than the attempted full acquisition last year. The 10-year deal provides for Microsoft\u2019s Bing to become the back-end search engine for Yahoo, while Yahoo becomes the exclusive sales force for premium search advertisers on both Bing and Yahoo. Listening to today\u2019s conference call, the rationale for the … Continue reading Microsoft – Yahoo search deal: 2+2 makes 5, or 3?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,55,74,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google","category-microsoft","category-search","category-yahoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}