Microsoft and Yahoo form partnership – It isn’t Yahsoft…it is Microhoo.
July 29, 2009
Have you ever noticed that when a merger, joint venture, or even when a research paper is published, that the person who is the TRUE leader in the deal (and make no mistake there must be a leader), is listed first.
If you go to B. L. & T law firm, you can COUNT on the fact that B. is the leader and L and T are subservient to some degree or another. So enter the wacky world of search engines.
This morning , Microsoft announced a search engine “partnership” with Yahoo. It is a 10 year deal that has possibly wide ranging implications for search engine marketing. Here’s my understanding so far.
- Yahoo will now be powered by MSN (yet another indicator of who’s on top – so to speak). “Savings” (read: layoffs) at Yahoo? $250 million
- MSN will benefit from Yahoo’s sales force to get more ads on their search engine.
- Yahoo will be compensated for those sales, ostensibly giving them a $500 million boost in revenue.
But does Yahoo really win? No. They are capitulating…which (IMHO) was the entire idea behind MSNs launch of Bing (or rather re-launch of MSN branded as Bing).
A couple of things to remember in all of this fun.
1) Microsoft is in the driver’s seat here. Period. Point. End of Story. Yahoo was losing fight after fight. It is Micro-hoo all the way. The agreement makes it clear to me that this is the end of the road long term for Yahoo both as a brand and as a search engine.
2) Microsoft may or may not be the real winner…being in control of the Titanic was not anymore of a winning hand than being in control of a smaller ship that hits an iceberg. It still sank.
3. Yahoo was spending HOW MUCH on their R&D on search?? With those kind of mediocre results? Wow…
4. I truly would like for a competitor to Google to step forward. As I posted earlier about bing being different lipstick same pig. Is this any different? I think the pig is a) more profitable b) bigger but c) fundamentally the same irrelevant pig…
I would enjoy your thoughts on this!
I think they have a better chance to survive now than before in that they seem to be willing to put the effort into advertising and the new look is really nice. Now can they produce relevant results???
Yep. That is the exact question. They currently do not show the will or desire to pursue that level of relevance, …but time will tell…
First I would like to note my feelings on bing.com actually being an improvement on MSN or Live search. Both in rendering meaningful results and being able to read more about what is included on the page of the listing. Now with that said bing.com is still to spammable and they need to focus more on finding ways to prevent spammers from using tricks to rank well. If they do not accomplish this then I really do not see them becomming a threat to Big G.
Now to discuss the point that Yahoo maybe out the door….I really do not see this happening and furthermore I doubt MSN will swallow them now that they have gained search with out purchasing Yahoo. I feel like Yahoo is looking more and more like a media company rather than a tech firm and I don’t think Microsoft wants to move in that direction.
What happens after the 10 year deal? Is Yahoo by default then out of business because Microsoft was strangling them for 10 years? Either way, Google just put a feather in their hat!