With the recent involvement of Microsoft in the search technology with Bing, and the will they or won’t they attach to Yahoo!, the most recent answer is Yes they will! Not at the corporate merger level, but maybe as a prelude. One question that investors, stockholders, and employees have to answer is will the partnership work? Just because they are both technology companies doesn’t mean that their vision is the same. So perhaps the announcement that they form an alliance to work with each others technology is just such a prelude.

What is the Response from Foreign Governments?

The European Commission has given Microsoft and Yahoo! the go ahead to to implement the search partnership. This is in addition to the green light given by other countries, Australia, Brazil and Canada to allow the partnership to go forward in implementing the search technology operation. Still Microsoft and Yahoo! are starting to work with Asian countries for the same go ahead. Microsoft and Yahoo! are working with regulators in Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The objective is to let the search partnership to work in those countries. Clearly, there is an infusion of mistrust that is now world wide when dealing with Microsoft. It stems from the old monopoly ruling of more that 10 years ago. But while these other countries have taken a closer eye at Microsoft actions, nevertheless, partnership agreements continue to go forward.

What is the Technology Alliance?

It is about the results of a search quest. Microsoft will work with Yahoo!; the same search result listings that are available through Bing, will be provided to Yahoo!.  In the meantime Yahoo! will take those listings and will innovate around them by integrating their own content. Yahoo! users will see Bing results but in combination with Yahoo!’s own detail content. The agreement is suppose to allow each partner to do what they do best. Yahoo will give the user the experience that they have wanted that comes from the search operation. Microsoft provides the search results.

But this begs the question, didn’t Yahoo have a search engine? The answer is yes. Is it going away? The answer is no. Apparently both companies will share mathematical algorithmic technologies. This will give a new search dimension to Bing. How much of this fusion will become operational is still up in the air. But this no doubt is part of that “partnership” mind view that expects that both companies to work together.

What Will the Partnership Provide for Advertisers?

Besides providing search content for users, Microsoft and Yahoo! will work with a different set of advertisers to engage the content. Yahoo! will work with high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will work with self-service advertisers. The expectations will result in different working activities and solutions. For instance, SEO, and resellers will work out different advertising rates with Yahoo!, smaller companies that work with Microsoft will likewise have different rates to work with. But both types of advertisers will benefit by the sheer size of the search results that will follow a query.

Timeline

Both companies will try to put the technology-advertising partnership together by the end of 2010. They would also like to have this accomplished before the 2010 holiday season, to allow advertisers to maximize on the results of the search query. This, however, is not written in stone. If they both determine that it would result in better operations after the 2010 holiday season then they will push the implementation back to 2011. As for their other world wide partners, the expectation is that everything will be in place by 2012.

Source: Microsoft and Yahoo!