Just a day after I posted about Microsoft trying to steal Yahoo!’s market share with a video game Microsoft and Yahoo! announce a joint agreement that will “improve the web experience for users and advertisers.”

The deal is:

Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

This is probably better than Microsoft acquiring Yahoo! but it does give Microsoft access to Yahoo! patented search technologies for the next 10 years.

Yahoo! has 19.6% market share and with the recently release of Bing they have been struggling to hang onto it. Bing still only accounts for 8.4% of the search engine market.

My theory is that the majority of Yahoo users use their search service because it is integrated with all of their other great services like Mail, Finance, and Answers. That’s why they have so much more of the market than Microsoft. Bing users seems to be happy with changes Microsoft has made to its search engine(s). That may be why Yahoo! and Microsoft are working together in this manner.

From TechCrunch: Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal: The Official Press Release

The Web Bing, Yahoo

Bing continues to try to steal market share from Google and Yahoo, this time by creating a video that challenges players to guess the search query that would return the website displayed.

In my opinion, it’s fun for one round and then I’m bored.

Play Bing’s Page Hunt

The Web Bing, Page Hunt