Yahoo has revised its search partnership with Microsoft with some changes. The duo will renew their search alliance started in 2009 and under the partnership, Microsoft will continue to provide search results for Yahoo.
The 10-year search partnership, crafted by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, allowed the companies to amend or terminate it after five years. At the end of last month, both the companies were re-negotiating their search alliance and hence extended the deadline for the same. The companies have decided that Microsoft will sell ads only for its Bing Ads platform and Yahoo will sell ads only for its Yahoo Gemini platform. Yahoo is using Bing ads for its desktop searches. Microsoft is providing the algorithm for Yahoo’s desktop search.
The original deal called for Microsoft to pay 88 percent of the search revenue to Yahoo. The ad commission rose to 90 percent in late February, according to regulatory filings. The companies said their economic arrangement will remain the same under the revised agreement. Both the companies are trying to compete with Google’s dominance of Internet searches. According to eMarketer, the two companies combined are estimated to represent 6.5% of the global search market this year as compared to 54% of Google.