I received the news from The Wall Street Journal on one of their ALERTS this Wednesday the 29th, but it looks like everyone was soon reporting it.
What am I talking about?
It is the deal that was agreed upon between Microsoft and Yahoo. The new venture will have Microsoft power Yahoo’s search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com.
You can get all the details here:
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx
This is great news of marketers simply because it brings competition into the search market. With Yahoo and Microsoft now a team, Google finally has some competition in the search market. This means that for the rest of us we should see: (1) Advertising costs coming down due to competition, and (2) perhaps this would lead to Google reconsidering their use of “Google Slaps”. Truth be told this is all new and only time will tell what really comes of this new arrangement.
Now before we all get too excited let’s take note that the deal does not take effect until 2010 and a lot can happen between now and then. However, in the end, I believe that competition would be a good thing for marketers and that is worth celebrating about.