Microsoft and Yahoo Combine Their Search Technologies

Will MicroHoo Raise Eyebrows On The Hill?, Congress Daily, Tech Daily Dose, July 29, 2009.

Under the 10-year agreement, Microsoft will acquire an exclusive license to Yahoo’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo search technologies into its existing Web search platforms. Microsoft’s new search engine Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo sites.

While the companies are trying to pitch this as providing more search engine diversity (for advertisers, not users: “advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search”), it further reduces the options users have to an open, transparent, accountable method of finding information.

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