The Microsoft and Yahoo search agreement makes a lot of sense.
Yahoo will save USD $425 million in operating expenses from resources invested in infrastructure technology while keeping 88% of revenue generated from search advertising.
On the other hand Microsoft not only gets a larger user base to further refine Bing, but Microsoft gets a 10 year lease on the Yahoo Search blueprint; which in paper should impact market share as well as advertiser share of wallet.
Will the Microsoft and Yahoo agreement have a significant impact on the current search landscape? Depends who you ask.
Predictions aside, the search agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo is not about gaining market share, it is about owning the emerging space of real time search.
Companies such as Collecta and OneRiot who have pioneered the development of real-time search will become acquisition targets for Microsoft and Google.
Google and Microsoft know the existing model of aggregating and indexing search is slowly becoming obsolete.
Every users' email, communication, IM message, comment, post, tweet has significant value as it represents knowledge of every day life that didn't exist before.
In general terms, Microsoft will leverage and aggregate this information via content (Bebo) while Google will do it via technology (Google Wave).
Having said that, Microsoft's browser and productivity software backyard is no longer safe.
The new real time search model is going back to the principles of the late nineties.
Back in 1999 when Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and AOL where the kings of organizing the web, human editors cataloged every site worth visiting and decided which ones we should visit.
While this model wrongly thought of the web as a medium, a sort of TV Guide, it was based on the principle of shared knowledge.
The future of search is still closely tied to the idea of shared knowledge, the difference in that knowledge is not controlled by a few, but associated to millions of conversations, opinions, ideas and comments.
The first significant test for Microsoft will come on December 2010.
On December 2010, the agreement between Google and AOL to provide the search engine on AOL comes up for renewal.
Yahoo will save USD $425 million in operating expenses from resources invested in infrastructure technology while keeping 88% of revenue generated from search advertising.
On the other hand Microsoft not only gets a larger user base to further refine Bing, but Microsoft gets a 10 year lease on the Yahoo Search blueprint; which in paper should impact market share as well as advertiser share of wallet.
Will the Microsoft and Yahoo agreement have a significant impact on the current search landscape? Depends who you ask.
Predictions aside, the search agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo is not about gaining market share, it is about owning the emerging space of real time search.
Companies such as Collecta and OneRiot who have pioneered the development of real-time search will become acquisition targets for Microsoft and Google.
Google and Microsoft know the existing model of aggregating and indexing search is slowly becoming obsolete.
Every users' email, communication, IM message, comment, post, tweet has significant value as it represents knowledge of every day life that didn't exist before.
In general terms, Microsoft will leverage and aggregate this information via content (Bebo) while Google will do it via technology (Google Wave).
Having said that, Microsoft's browser and productivity software backyard is no longer safe.
The new real time search model is going back to the principles of the late nineties.
Back in 1999 when Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and AOL where the kings of organizing the web, human editors cataloged every site worth visiting and decided which ones we should visit.
While this model wrongly thought of the web as a medium, a sort of TV Guide, it was based on the principle of shared knowledge.
The future of search is still closely tied to the idea of shared knowledge, the difference in that knowledge is not controlled by a few, but associated to millions of conversations, opinions, ideas and comments.
The first significant test for Microsoft will come on December 2010.
On December 2010, the agreement between Google and AOL to provide the search engine on AOL comes up for renewal.
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