5-days ago YAHOO! and MICROSOFT announced their global agreement that will supposedly create a better choice for consumers and advertisers. microsoft will now power yahoo! search while yahoo! will become the worldwide relationship sales force for both companies premium search advertisers.
users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance leading to more value for advertisers as well as better results for web publishers and increased innovation and efficiency across the world wide web.
the agreement does NOT cover each companys web properties and products or any other aspect of their businesses including email or instant messaging or display advertising. the 2-companies will continue to compete for customers in those areas. however the term of the agreement is 10-years and does include the integration of yahoo! search technology into microsofts existing web search platforms.
yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships. microsoft will compensate yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement and will guarantee yahoo! revenue per search in each country for the first 18-months following the initial implementation in that country. microsoft will also pay traffic acquisition costs to yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on yahoo! sites during the first 5-years of the agreement.
the agreement also protects CONSUMER PRIVACY by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform. and it restricts the use of search data shared between the 2-companies. and the agreement will maintain the industry leading privacy practices that each company currently follows.
this merger deal is noteworthy because it aligns 2-powerful technology players in an attempt to take down the search engine kingpin GOOGLE a notch or two. and when googles search results and search advertising contract with AOL expires in december of 2010 microsoft is expected to bid agressively against google to provide the search engine on america online . . . dictatorship?
