Yahoo Wins Walmart's Biggest Online Ad Campaign
forbes.com
forbes.com
Uhhhhhh...
I hate to say it but it is hard to be number two when your search engine is contracted out to the real number two.
The Yahoo/Bing search deal has only just been approved by the EU. Yahoo's search engine is still their own and will be for the next couple of years.
The Bing deal is actually a very odd beast, and I'm not sure if I like it, but I will say this: Carol Bartz asked for and got a 88% revenue share. This is unheard of, like getting the Devil to cosign your mortgage.
Whatever you think of the deal, it's not a) a surrender and b) actually implemented yet. I realize that it is hard to make an informed comment when a snide remark will do. But give them a break, eh?
Actually the deal has been approved by the US DoJ too. 88% revenue share is only for the traffic that Y! generates through its properties - if people hit bing.com directly, Y! gets nothing. Needless to say MSFT is betting that in the long-term they can convince people to visit Bing.com directly. Y! is hoping they can innovate on top of the raw search results to still keep users coming to Y! search. I just fear none of this will have any impact on Google's search share - Y! and Bing will cannibalize on each other. But who knows how it will all pan out.