It looks like Microsoft and Yahoo! are about to close a deal that may lead to Microsoft owning Yahoo!s search business and sharing the revenue with Yahoo! for a number of years. I have a few observations about this:

1. Microsoft, with Bing, has already proven itself more adept at search as well as more interested in pursuing a real competitive stance in that arena.
2. The partnership could mean close to 30% market share for Microsoft, which would put them in the competitive ballpark.
3. Microsoft and Yahoo! seem to serve the same demographic so it may be a great match.

According to HitWise as reported by WebProNews, about 24% of Yahoo!s search business, and 20% of Bing’s, is in the small business/retail category. Here are the numbers:

• Yahoo! Computers/Internet 22.2%
• Yahoo! Entertainment 13.5%
• Yahoo! Shopping and Classifieds 13%
• Yahoo! Business and Finance 11%
• Yahoo! Education 6.1%
• Yahoo! News 5.9%

• Microsoft Computers/Internet 27.8%
• Microsoft Entertainment 13.4%
• Microsoft Shopping and Classifieds 11.7%
• Microsoft Business and Finance 9.6%
• Microsoft Education 5.1%
• Microsoft News 6.6%

Now do you think this will be a good partnership? Will be good for search?

Tags: microsoft, search, yahoo

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under search engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.