Microsoft and Yahoo Agree to Amend Search Partnership

This seems to be the key takeaway:

> First, Yahoo will now have increased flexibility to enhance the search experience on any platform, since the partnership is non-exclusive for both desktop and mobile.

Bing keeps getting add revenue and yahoo is free to either buy, develop or partner with another search company in the mid to long term.

It looks like this is business as usual. It was rumored that Microsoft might have to put up a large chunk of cash to keep this deal. It looks like Yahoo blinked first here.

> Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads and search results for a majority of its desktop search traffic.

Interesting that they single out desktop traffic and leave out mobile. I'm not sure if this is microsoft thinking that mobile isn't worth the trouble for add revenue or if yahoo thinks mobile add revenue is too important/strategic to give up....

> Microsoft will become the exclusive salesforce for ads delivered by Microsoft’s Bing Ads platform, while Yahoo will continue to be the exclusive salesforce for Yahoo’s Gemini ads platform.

I'm not entirely sure what they are getting at here. Was yahoo selling bing ads on Microsoft's behalf before?

My general sense of the revised partnership doesn't really surprise me. On an open webinar a while ago a Yahoo! rep seemed particularly passionate about the Gemini platform and its room for growth while (IIRC) rather vague in response to questions surrounding Bing ads vs. Gemini. Gemini's early integration with tools like Marin Software also indicate a strong interest in driving use of this product.

Does that means microsoft won again?

if yahoo just got the bing ads from an ad network, they would be paying cents per click and keeping the rest. with the deal, microsoft is the only source of ads, and keep a huge chunk.

I wish they would partner up with duckduckgo. But then, yahoo wouldn't get the advantage of tracking people for ads.