Bing Brings Yahoo and Microsoft together
Well, the on-off affair between Microsoft and Yahoo is back on again as the companies announce a partnership arrangement aimed at improving their share of the search market.
The result will see Yahoo using Microsoft’s Bing search engine technology in conjunction with Yahoo’s ad network.
I don’t see this an an attempt to try and take Google on head-on. I think we will find that the pair have joined forces to adopt a different tactic, aimed at gradually eroding Google’s market share.
The recent introduction of more specialised and ‘niche’ search tools, such as Wolfram Alpha is leading to a slight distillation of the search market, where certain groups of people will perform their searches on specialised tools rather than using the ‘default’ tool (Google).
I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft and Yahoo attempt to target Bing (or variations/extensions of it) at specific niche audiences, in the hope that they can chip away chunks of the search market from Google. I don’t think a full-frontal attack on Google will work anytime soon, but by being nimbler and focussing on specific markets it may be possible for them to make decent inroads into Google’s customer base.
