Software giant Microsoft and search engine Yahoo! have been giving the go signal by American and European regulators to form an alliance. The former rivals will form a team in an effort to compete with Google, which is dominating the search engine wars.
The approval ends seven months of anxious waiting for both Microsoft and Yahoo!, which had toyed with the partnership idea as early as 2006. Microsoft even attempted to buy Yahoo! in 2008, but later reconsidered its $ 47.5 billion offer.
Under the plan, Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s search technology. Microsoft, on the other hand, will gain access to Yahoo!’s market share, which has dwindled over the years in the face of Google’s emergence.
However, Microsoft and Yahoo! might need to extend their deal beyond the initial ten years if they are serious about going after Google, which now controls two-thirds of all search traffic in the world. Yahoo has 7.4 percent ofthe search engine market while Microsoft’s Bing accounts for a measly 3.2 percent.
