News
Microsoft, Yahoo agree on long-sought search deal
By: yahoo.comPosted On: 07/29/2009 11 A
Microsoft Corp. has finally roped Yahoo Inc. into an Internet search partnership, capping a convoluted pursuit that dragged on for years and finally setting the stage for the rivals to make an all-out assault against the dominance of Google Inc.
The 10-year deal announced Wednesday gives Microsoft access to the Internet's second-largest search engine audience, adding a potentially potent weapon to the software maker's Internet arsenal as it tries to better confront Google, the leader in online search and advertising.
Google tried to stop Yahoo from falling into Microsoft's camp. Last year it formed its own proposed search advertising deal with Yahoo, only to be forced to retreat from that alliance after U.S. antitrust officials threatened to sue.
The extended reach will allow Microsoft to introduce its recently upgraded search engine, called Bing, to more people. The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker believes Bing is just as good, if not better, than Google's search engine. Taking over the search responsibilities on Yahoo's highly trafficked site gives Microsoft a better chance to convert Web surfers who had been using Google by force of habit.
"Microsoft and Yahoo know there's so much more that search could be," said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. "This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search."
In return for turning over the keys to its search engine to Bing and promoting it, Yahoo will get to keep 88 percent of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and will have the right to sell ads on some Microsoft sites.
Yahoo estimated the deal will boost its annual operating profit by $500 million and save the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company about $275 million on capital expenditures a year because it won't have to invest in its own search technology. An unspecified number of Yahoo engineers will lose their jobs as the company scales back, Yahoo Chief Executive Carol Bartz told analysts in a Wednesday conference call.
The deal isn't expected to close until early next year, and then it could take another two years before all the pieces of the partnership are in place worldwide. The companies first will give antitrust regulators time to review the proposed partnership's effects on the Internet ad market and then it will take time to stitch together their different technologies.
In premarket activity, shares of Yahoo slid $1.19, or 6.9 percent, to $16.03, as investors digested the fact that the company is not getting an upfront payment from Microsoft, as had long been rumored. Microsoft shares advanced 13 cents to $23.60.
The alliance could give Yahoo a chance to recoup some of the money squandered in May 2008, when it turned down a chance to sell the entire company to Microsoft for $47.5 billion.
Yahoo's market value currently stands at about $24 billion. Yahoo just came off a tough quarter in search advertising, with its revenue in that niche falling 15 percent in the April-June period.
The two rivals began talking about a possible partnership as far back as 2005 before Microsoft intensified the courtship with last year's attempt to buy Yahoo.
It took Bartz just six months to strike a deal with Microsoft
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