Emre Sokullu

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Exciting news for the internet and search industries; Yahoo gives up its search unit and starts using Microsoft's Bing as its main search provider.





I think this does mean efficiency for both parties, and it's beneficial for everyone. As Steve Ballmer suggests, a stronger competitor to Google means advertising dollars to split; because right now, all the advertising dollars on the web are going to Google as the competitors have negligible market share when they are divided. But 30% market share against Google's 70% is a significant enough and respectable number that gain the attention of advertisers all around the world.

OK.. So I'm mostly positive about this deal. But what's the downside? I think there's 1 downside for Yahoo; the integration time is too long - 24 months - and this might cause an alienation in Yahoo's user base. Because probably, with this news, the rumours of Bing's search technology is so strong will spread out everywhere. And just like what happened with Yahoo - Google years ago, the remaining users of Yahoo may switch to Bing as well, as a result of those words. Probably Yahoo's bet here is that, the remaining users are loyal, they haven't switched to Google for the search technology, so they won't switch to Bing as well. We'll see...

And as for Microsoft, as one of the bankers asked, the financial upsides for MSFT side is not as clear as it is for YHOO. But my gut says this deal will take the combined entity's revenues so high that it will be beneficial for both Yahoo and Microsoft.

I'm glad that Yahoo will have more opportunity to focus on their core values. And again, congratulations Jerry Yang for making the right move and not selling Yahoo a year ago - that alone was a very big decision and I believe, people will appreciate it years later.