Xtra/Yahoo NZ back in the Search Hands of Microsoft

Will it be Binghoo or Yabing?

With the announcement that Microsoft and Yahoo collaborating on search for a 10 year license term, one of the key outcomes is that Yahoo search will now be powered by Bing, the new Microsoft “Decision Engine”

After Xtra ditched MSN and went to Yahoo, Microsoft is back in the fold.

Regulatory issues in the US could mean we won’t see “powered by Bing” at the bottom of our Yahoo results for a couple of years.

So what affect will this have on the search market in New Zealand?

Not much.

It is pretty hard to compete with a competitor has over 90% of the market. The only thing I could see is that they might actually make an effort to increase their share. With each owning less than 5% share, it was even more futile. So now they have a chance, albeit a very slim one.

Microsoft will have access to key Yahoo technologies to make Bing better (Can’t see how this is good for Yahoo in the long run, past the 10 year license) and in Steve Ballmer’s words, reported by Danny Sullivan from the press conference.

Burden on Microsoft to deliver the goods and enable Yahoo to be successful

I think the key issue here is that Microsoft and Yahoo have finally decided that they will only be able to compete with Google when they stop fighting amongst themselves and consolidate their effort against a common enemy. Again as reported by Danny Sullivan:

Carol Bartz, Yahoo CEO: it’s hard to be a long term leader with Microsoft and Google keep stealing your employees

So I expect it will be a drawn out process, no surprise launch like Bing a couple of months back, but it will be an uphill battle for both to finally prevail as the No 1 search engine here and internationally.

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