Now that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is public and the details have been hashed over by blog after blog, the dust is settling, and we are perhaps getting a clearer picture of what to expect in the future.
Bing and Yahoo will keep their own branding, but Yahoo’s search results will be powered by Bing.
Great – but what about Google? The Mountain View-based industry leader was expected (by some) to throw a fit about the union between number 2 Yahoo and number 3 Bing – yet they released a statement basically saying they were intrigued and interested in the partnership. To me it read: “and then there was only one remaining…”
I don’t think Google has anything to worry about from the Yahoo/Microsoft partnership in terms of search engine market share. With Google Voice and Google Wave being the next hot online tools, I don’t see Bing/Yahoo deal snatching away the limelight.
It will be interesting to see what happens in 2010 when we can finally hope to see the results online of the Bing/Yahoo deal. But until then, what can we expect from the search engine rankings?
Well so far – not much.
For all the hubbub about the Bing search engine, it really hasn’t made much of an impact in the search engine industry. Bing merely took over the market share that Live Search and MSN held, and it’s snagged a few tenths of a percentage point from Yahoo and Google.
In fact, in the past 30 days, Google’s U.S. market share has INCREASED, while Bing has DROPPED over two percent! Hmm…
Yahoo has seen a slight increase in U.S. market share over the same time period – suggesting that the two leaders in the industry (Google and Yahoo) aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
It’s going to be a while before we see anything actually happening online with Bing and Yahoo – and even longer before we see any hope for the new deal to claim market share from Google. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Tags: Bing, Google, Microsoft, search engines, Yahoo
