It took eight months, but the search strategy that Microsoft and Yahoo have settled on after years of flirting going to start working.
U.S. Department of Justice and the European Union gave his blessing to the deal early on Thursday, paving the way for Microsoft to take the business of providing search results in Yahoo while Yahoo will sell search ads on both Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo is busy reminding those who will listen that he will continue to monitor the results by finding, presented in its pages, while Microsoft believes it can improve the search algorithms with access to a mass audience of Yahoo.
It will take some time for companies to implement complex transaction. At the same time, here's a list of questions and answers that are bound to arise now that the deed is done.
How do we get here? Slowly. Microsoft and Yahoo have been talking about the different combinations, acquisitions, partnerships and alliances since 2008, until it finally stopped on the current deal after the disastrous acquisition of negotiations led to the hiring Yahoo's general director Carol Bartz. The deal was delayed pending regulatory review, as almost any time that the two companies in the three companies on the market offering to combine efforts, regulators will want to explore the potential consequences.
What will change at Yahoo's? Changes can be very difficult for us. Microsoft now provides a baseline technology that creates the search results and search ads based on keyword query. But Yahoo will control how these results are presented, that is, he can add all sorts of structured content, as the statistics of baseball players or movie times at local theaters for the search query.
There will probably be some difference in time between the way Yahoo's algorithm will determine the most important results, and how Microsoft technologies go about this process. But for the most part, the business of indexing and ranking the results somewhat transparent to the average search. Companies and publishers, on the other hand, will be closely monitored.
What will happen on technology, such as Yahoo BOSS and Search Monkey? Microsoft has the right to use these technologies in their search for Arsenal, but they are being very coy about its plans at the moment. Microsoft now has a 10-year license for "some Yahoo search technology," according to the website created to explain the transaction. This means that they can essentially cherry choose things that they like and ignore the fact that they do not.
United Companies still seem interested in the BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), but have not yet decided whether it will be a project Yahoo, the combined project, or turn into another quite different, according to the Yahoo Developer Network blog. Search Monkey - a project to promote the concept of semantic search - it seems a bit more in the air: "landscape is complex, so we make every effort to determine which path provides the best value for site owners and end users, the company said on Thursday.
What will change for Microsoft? Microsoft will have to relinquish control of its major advertisers, search Yahoo sales in exchange for increased market share. Microsoft also will choose from a variety of Yahoo's back end search technologies developed over many years, and a number of Yahoo employees will now work at Microsoft.
The company claims that its technology will improve the position once he has access to the users of Yahoo, which is skeptical about Google, but Microsoft will have the opportunity to prove on its own. Either way, this deal is a vote of confidence Bing technologies Microsoft.
