Andrew Watson

Yahoo and Microsoft partnership

Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by Andrew Watson in Brand Building, Microsoft / Bing, Online Marketing, SEO & Search Engines, Yahoo

Microsoft and Yahoo, have at last, announced a search partnership, using the new Bing search engine to take on the dominance of Google. The partnership has been rumoured for months with Steve Blamer stating “Through this agreement with Yahoo, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,”.

Having launched the Bing search engine last month, Microsoft is looking to keep garnering the momentum generated to date – certainly those that have joined the Bing Facebook or Bing Twitter groups will see how active the Bing team has been in marketing themselves.

The launch of the new search engine looks like it is still gathering traction (although lets not forget it is still early days) in market, with the latest UK search engine market share showing the former Microsoft search engine growing from being used in 1.4% of searches, to Bing being used in 2.77% of searches (April / May 2009 v June / July GlobalStats, StatCounter):

1. 90.74% – Google
2. 4.35% – Yahoo
3. 2.77% – Bing
4. 1.13% – AOL
5. 0.86% – Ask Jeeves
6. 0.14% – Other

Of course many commentators out there will be asking if this partnership make a dent in Google’s dominant position, and if you look back through its own rapid development, one shouldn’t forget Google’s similar path, in partnering with AOL in 2005. So there is plenty for Google to be concerned about – and no doubt they’ll have their say with various anti-trust courts – but will �it enough for everyday users to add Bing to their everyday vocabulary – maybe just maybe…