After quiting the search engine wars, it looks as if Yahoo! has finally begun handing over its beloved search bar, dignity and any silver medals to Microsoft’s Bing, who (as shown below) eagerly awaits the opportunity to take on Google.
When we announced our intention to enter into a search and advertising relationship with Yahoo! almost a year ago, we began a journey that will help us build a scale search advertising marketplace and provide a real competitive alternative for consumers, publishers and advertisers.
Beginning just a few days ago, we began some important testing across both our systems designed to verify our joint work and make sure we are ready to deliver a quality transition for customers, which we are on track to complete in the US and Canada over the next few months. (Bing Community Blog)
While the deal does ensure that Yahoo! remains profitable, it will also ensure that Yahoo! will over the next decade become more or less irrelevant in their foolish attempt at becoming a portal.
Although this deal will provide more immediate competition to the market place, it will also mark the beginning of the end of search engine diversity (with the end result being duopoly instead of variety).
Hopefully another company can arise to help bring balance to the search engine universe (perhaps Facebook?) lest the western world be forced to choose between two companies with a history of being “evil.”
Originally posted on July 22, 2010 @ 5:12 pm