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Yahoo! The Internet Businesses Microsoft

Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Deal 301

Posted by kdawson from the rhymes-with-sting dept.
e9th writes "We know that Microsoft failed last February in its attempt to buy Yahoo. Now, Advertising Age reports that they've reached a deal. Instead of a buyout, the two will enter into a revenue sharing agreement, and Bing will become Yahoo's default search engine. The meat of the AdAge article can be found in Yahoo News. This deal may give Google something to worry about."
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Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Deal More

Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Deal

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  • Goodbye old friend. (Score:5, Funny)

    by thatkid_2002 ( 1529917 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:47PM (#28862063)
    BRB, cancelling my Yahoo! account.

    • Re:Goodbye old friend. (Score:5, Informative)

      by HouseOfMisterE ( 659953 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:03AM (#28862163)

      Others may joke, but I agree with you. I'll miss them, but goodbye to my.yahoo.com and www.yahoo.com.

    • Re:Goodbye old friend. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:14AM (#28862215) Journal
      And I had set Yahoo as Firefox's address bar search engine only a few days ago...

    • Love the Yahoo (Score:5, Informative)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @03:09AM (#28863075) Journal

      You gotta love the Yahoo, if for no other reason than Zimbra [zimbra.com]. More than any other piece of software, it's the "Exchange Killer" that we've all wondered about. It matches, feature-for-feature, Exchange. It's (mostly) open-source. It runs fine on Linux. It works with Windows, Mac, Linux, KDE, Google Calendars/Email, and just about everything else, including my WinMo phone.

      It's a god-send, it works nicely with basically no fuss or hassle, and it's owned by Yahoo.

      Hey, if Yahoo goes belly up, I just hope they sell Zimbra to somebody who can take the good thing handed to them and DO SOMETHING with it!?!?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by nazsco ( 695026 )

        You gotta love the Yahoo, if for no other reason than Zimbra [zimbra.com]. More than any other piece of software, it's the "Exchange Killer" that we've all wondered about. It matches, feature-for-feature, Exchange. It's (mostly) open-source. It runs fine on Linux. It works with Windows, Mac, Linux, KDE, Google Calendars/Email, and just about everything else, ...

        They say that the internal project to make zimbra the internal email plataform at yahoo (like gmail is at google, under the Mona name) was handed over to a bunch of people that actually had Exchange Engineer as their work title. So, the Sr. exchange Engineer veredict was that exchange was better. What a surprise. Zimbra will probably get sacked.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by remmelt ( 837671 )

      Yeah, too bad it's linked to my Flickr account as well.

  • I just asked Google if it had any reason to worry (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:48PM (#28862075)

    It said 0 results found.

    • Re:I just asked Google if it had any reason to wor (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:16AM (#28862233) Journal
      If that's true, it missed the antitrust investigation against them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

        I searched "Google antitrust investigation" and it returned this image [leconcombre.com]

      • I just search for "chances of Google being trust-busted" and got 0 results.

        Now that we've got that issue resolved, I think I'll go check my ad earnings in Google AdSense, followed by checking my site traffic in Google Analytics, followed by checking a few keyword rankings in Google Search, followed by tweaking a couple of settings in Google Webmaster Tools, followed by checking for new posts on the Inside AdSense blog, followed by %@$#! [NO CARRIER]

      • There is a conspiracy theory that MS kept supporting Apple even in its darkest days just to prevent a possible monopoly lawsuit. Of course, the IE lunacy (which still goes on) and Apple's horrible management before SJobs broke the entire plan.

        If Google had a credible rival in advertising business, it would prevent trust allegations. Not a real rival, a rival having 20-30% of market would be enough.

  • Moot point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sporkinum ( 655143 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:50PM (#28862087)

    Yahoo search was useless anyway, so having bing won't change anything for me. It will give them great insight into how people use yahoo's web site though, which will probably allow MSN to poach yahoo users.

  • Google worrying. (Score:5, Informative)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:51PM (#28862095)

    Yeah. [searchengineland.com]

  • Bing... (Score:4, Funny)

    by freedomlinux ( 1072142 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:52PM (#28862103) Homepage
    Bing will become Yahoo's default search engine.
    I think I just cried a little...

  • Google in trouble? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lordharsha ( 1101875 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:52PM (#28862107)

    Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one. I don't really think Google has anything to worry about. Kindly take your rabble rousing elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by pushing-robot ( 1037830 )

      Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one.

      But it never stopped anyone from trying! [penny-arcade.com]

    • Re:Google in trouble? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:14AM (#28862217)

      Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one.

      Hey, it worked for Reese's!

    • Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one.

      Damn straight, it gives you a SuperInferior(TM) technology! Or, you know, just Super. With all the SuperShiny(TM) bells and whistles you've come to know and loathe! Well, we've still got the marketing to work out, but trust us, we will fucking bury Google!

      • Actually, you StumbledUpon something... (sorry - bad pun.)

        Microsoft never mastered the art of naming. When they go short they get things like Zunes that squirt and Bing.

        So then they retreat by putting their properties menu into the name.
        InferiorTech with the SuperiorityComplex.

    • Re:Google in trouble? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bonch ( 38532 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:42AM (#28862357)

      It's interesting how people side with Google on this site, even though they're guilty of many of the things people complain about Microsoft doing, such as putting out lots of side products that have little to moderate success, attempting to tie branded products together to create one giant platform, and collecting data on users. Merely suggesting a competitor could actually make Google worry about something is even labeled rabble rousing.

      • Re:Google in trouble? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shish ( 588640 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @01:26AM (#28862595) Homepage

        such as putting out lots of side products that have little to moderate success

        I can't say I've ever even seen anyone complain about either company doing this o_O What are you talking about, and why is this supposed to be a problem? :S

        attempting to tie branded products together to create one giant platform

        Having a large platform is fine, if it's based on open standards, and people using third party clients and servers aren't shunned

      • 1. They don't charge for those side products, if you don't like them don't use them. Unlike overpriced software you're forced to deal with because it truly does have a monopoly on office software.

        2. The first step to anything google is to manually go to google.com. Microsoft comes installed into almost every premade computer, with it's own software like IE and Outlook pre installed as defaults and using their services as default.

        3. Google gives a very clear policy [google.com] on what information they save and why.

      • Right, somehow people side with both Google and Apple because they combine legitimate gestures of OSS software but then make F Cordon Bleu to grind the back end. However, I distrust the Fall From Grace of both those companies. Having declined:

        1. Hotmail&IE&MS Search&Palm (90's darling package)
        2. Gmail&Safari&MacOS&Google Search&iPhone(2000's package)

        I ran out of energy for ParadigmShifts and settled for a sludge of:
        Windows&Yahoo Mail&Yahoo Advanced& WinMobile 6.1. Rea

        • (Offtopic ramble: Gee. Ate them in Preview, then put them back. But why a 30 second delay posting even when logged in?)

      • Re:Google in trouble? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by myxiplx ( 906307 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @03:12AM (#28863099)

        Yes, but Google are also *not* doing rather a lot of stuff Microsoft did:

        - They're not forcing you to use their products.
        - They don't deliberately break backwards compatibility, using peer pressure to force you to spend more money to upgrade.
        - They're not breaking competing products.

        There's a massive difference between Google and Microsoft. I *choose* to use a vast number of google's products, simply because they are better than anything else out there. I'm *forced* to use Microsoft products, often at great expense, when I would much rather be using alternatives.

    • Showing that you, like many other here on /. mistakenly think of Google as only a search company - rather than considering how Google is an also-ran in many of the areas that Microsoft and Yahoo! dominate in. There's more to the web than search.

    • Cobbling together 2 inferior technologies doesn't give you a superior one.

      But it gives a subSUPREME technology! It worked for subPRIME, didn't it?

  • Everybody needs competition (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nitroamos ( 261075 ) on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @11:54PM (#28862111)

    including Google.

    • Re:Everybody needs competition (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:16AM (#28862231)

      When that competition arrives, I expect to read about it here, today is not that day.

  • Tech version of Stearns County Syndrome (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is why we don't allow cousins to marry...

    What strange mutations/recessive genes are we going to see sprout out of all this coupling???

  • Two wrongs don't make a right... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:01AM (#28862147)

    But two trains traveling a break-neck speeds towards each other with no sign of stopping makes me feel like throwing some popcorn in the microwave.

  • Yahoo's promise to discard data after 3 months? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I switched from Google to Yahoo! search recently because Yahoo! promised to discard user search data after 3 months. I'm guessing that the switch to Bing negates that promise, so what search engine(s) are left that are both useful & ethical?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vain gloria ( 831093 )
      Cuil was launched last year with great fanfare regarding its privacy policy which promised not to track users' personally identifiable information. See their current policy alongside a warning that it is soon to change somehow here: http://www.cuil.com/info/privacy/ [cuil.com]

      I use and normally recommend Clusty which says in plain English that "We at Clusty don't track you." (http://clusty.com/privacy) and in legalese that they do collect "Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, referral data, th

    • Why can't you just block cookies, or am I missing something here?

      Hopefully this provides the competition Google needs to better their search results.

    • You could check out https://startpage.com./ [startpage.com.]

      (I have not tried to verify their service claims.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xeoron ( 639412 )
      Do they still keep it if you change your Google search history settings to not save past searches under account settings?

  • Yahcrosoft or Microhoo!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:10AM (#28862199) Journal

    Yahcrsoft or Microhoo!? Which name are they going with?

    Or Yahsoft? Or Microshoo?

    Binghoosoft?

    Anyone?

  • Now how to explain this to Grandma with out her looking at me more stranger than usual. Hmm.

  • ... or, more likely, will not give Google anything to worry about. at all.

  • Seriously, they used to be a search company, but don't do search technology anymore, so what are they, just a portal/email provider now?

  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kamineko ( 851857 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:44AM (#28862365)
    Some people here are saying that the quality of Bing results is comparable to Google's results in many cases. If we assume that's true, then Yahoo will become exactly like it was several years ago when it was using Google. As a Yahoo service, it'll still be covered in crap, and all that'll do is make people go to Bing, like Yahoo's use of Google lead to folks to use Google ("it's like Yahoo's search, but not crap!"). That'll work wonders for Yahoo. Again.

  • I don't get it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rocketship Underpant ( 804162 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:54AM (#28862427)
    Bing isn't really better than Yahoo's search it is? What's more, what about foreign-language searching? Yahoo is the only search engine that has spent significant resources improving their Japanese search results, for example. (Google is beginning to do this, but their search results still suck badly.) I imagine Bing would be a big step backward for most people outside the U.S.

    • Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @01:58AM (#28862733) Homepage

      Agree on this. Yahoo is much better than Google for Japanese language search (and Google translate is a sad joke for Japanese; even when I take the time to read through the Japanese original I can often still not make sense of the English "translation"). There's going to be a lot of unhappy people here if they manage to bork that up.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Jeeeb ( 1141117 )
      Yahoo Japan is somewhat separate from the main company. I doubt this deal will affect them.

      On a side note Yahoo's Japanese search isn't as great as people make it out to be. Here's an amusing exercise (For those who know Japanese):

      Go to Yahoo Japan and type in 'Kousoku Basu' (Obviously in Kanji+Kana). Look through the results and note carefully that Yahoo's own (very comprehensive) domestic bus search + booking service doesn't come up. At least not in the first 4 pages of results I looked at. Also for

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Rocketship Underpant ( 804162 )
        I know Yahoo's Japanese search isn't perfect -- they probably haven't manually seeded the results to make sure their own services come up, like in the example you gave -- but all Google gives you for most searches is several pages of irrelevant blog postings. Yahoo's normalization of Japanese search queries (searching for the kanji version of a kana query or vice versa, for example) used to be a lot better than Google's, although Google has improved on that score. But has Bing done any normalization in Jap
  • I remember back when they had 20 million in start up money, and were poised to bring Google to their knees (or so ppl said). Whatever happened with that?
  • Why would it?

    It diverts attention of competition authorities from a self-proclaimed "do no evil" search giant earning its money through rather unobtrusive advertising (and which has now even been given a reinvigorated major competitor), to a company that is no stranger to antitrust crosshairs and with a body of Findings of Fact [usdoj.gov] from earlier proceedings against it.

  • Does anybody have any ability to measure how good a particular search engine is? I'm not going to compare total hits, as searching for "linux" on both could result in 100m pages. Taking the reputations of the companies out of the question how do you determine which search engine is better? Do you have to know the inner workings of the algorithm to make an intelligent conclusion?

  • 2 suggestions to new management team (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ilgaz ( 86384 ) on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @03:40AM (#28863241) Homepage

    Open Firefox in your 30 inch presentation monitors. Let it open 2 windows and put them next to each other on desktop both showing same time.

    Now, open these addresses.
    http://adwords.google.com/ [google.com]
    http://advertising.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com] (I don't even KNOW live.com advertising url)

    Act like you are a little company wanting to advertise your product and compare them, especially international language support.

    I don't like Google, its policies etc. but there is a fact that they don't have competitor at all. Not because they send a secret signal to advertiser brains, their advertising system is way better that is all.

    Want to compete? My nr1 suggestion would be "quality control" of ads. Give users chance to click "spam" in advertising or some sort of "thumbs down" scheme, use the already included MCafee siteadvisor for ads etc. E.g. there is no way to prevent Scientology advertising attack on Slashdot. If there was a tiny button like "spam" or "off topic", I would click it and have the really mattering ads show. It is not something can be done by Google or Slashdot.

    For a long time, I don't click to software "want to download ...., click here?" ads too. I don't trust them, I go to site itself or a trusted, edited download site. That is where my "mcafee siteadvisor" idea comes from.

  • Are doomed. The tech roadways are littered with the corpses of companies that got involved in a deal with Microsoft.

    Prediction: Yahoo! will suffer the same fate. Negotiations will continue until Microsoft has all the details on what Yahoo! does and how they do it - then the negotiations will fail and Microsoft will "innovate" the technology and claim it as their own. They've gotten away with this so many times already - and I'm sure someone will show up in this thread to list off the companies that made

  • If like me you read the business section of your broadsheet, then you'll probably be a little happier about this.

    For those that didn't, Karl Icahn has been a one man activist investor of late. While admittedly Yahoo has had no compelling game plan, Icahn has quite simply been shit-stiring the whole Microsoft approach in order to get Yahoo to cave in. Originally MS wanted to buy out Yahoo's search business - but what would that leave the rest of Yahoo with? Icahn has been vocal about Yahoo not accepting seve

  • and you ms boys, dont give me any shit - just days ago microsoft pulled another stunt with the open source release move and it turned out they did it to save their ass.

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