Yahoo Searches In U.S. Now Powered By Microsoft Bing
Searches on Yahoo sites in the U.S. and Canada are now powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine, fulfilling a key component of the alliance the two companies formed a little more than a year ago. The transition throughout the rest of the world will take place in stages in 2011 and 2012.
A search on Yahoo now turns up a page of results with a "Powered by Bing" notation at the bottom. Bing now powers Yahoo's Internet, image and video search applications for desktop computers and mobile devices.
"This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer," said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services Division, in a post on the Bing community Web site.
Nadella said the companies are still working to migrate Yahoo's search advertising platform to Microsoft's adCenter, a task that she said should be completed by the fall, in time for the holiday shopping season. Under their alliance the two companies will split the ad revenue.
Last week Shashi Seth, Yahoo search product operations vice president, said the transition to the Bing search engine had begun.
Yahoo and Microsoft struck a 10-year deal in July 2009 under which Yahoo would use Bing as the back-end system for Yahoo search pages. The alliance also calls for Yahoo to become the worldwide sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.
The companies formed the alliance in an effort to blunt Google's growing dominance of the search market. Yahoo also hopes the move will help it reduce its operating expenses.
The deal came after an unsuccessful effort by Microsoft to buy Yahoo outright in 2008 for $44.6 billion.
Google held about 66 percent of the search market in July, according to numbers compiled by market research firm ComScore, while Yahoo had 17 percent and Microsoft had 11 percent.
Last month, in an unexpected twist, Yahoo Japan Corp., of which Yahoo Inc. owns 35 percent, said it would use Google's search engine and advertising technology to replace its existing search system. That runs counter to Yahoo's tight relationship with Microsoft and Bing.