After over a year of negotiations, Microsoft and Yahoo! have settled on a deal to combine their search engine capabilities to compete with Google. Microsoft now has control over Yahoo's search engine platform and all of the future consumer search data that comes with it, while Yahoo continues to profit off of ad sales.
What does this mean to you? Before this merger, Google dominated the search engine market receiving about 60-70% of the market share of searches. Yahoo hovered around 20% and Microsoft's rebranded engine, Bing, about 10%. This meant that if you had to choose a platform to invest in advertising, you would reach more viewers advertising in Google. Now with 30% of the market, and the only viable competitor to Google, Bing may be a more attractive platform to advertise in. However, this could also lead to price wars for ads now that there are fewer search engines to advertise in.
We will stay tuned to this story to learn more about how this merger will affect your online marketing efforts.
Additional Reading: Business Week, NPR.org