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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal: The Key Facts

Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal: The Key Facts: "

If you’ve been following the story about the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, the details of which have been leaking out in the last 24 hours, you’re probably confused. The deal itself is very different from what was speculated the first time around.

Now, we’ve got the official press release below; we’ll also point out the most important facts about the deal to make it easier to understand. In the shortest possible terms, Yahoo is cutting costs by ditching its own search, and Microsoft is becoming Google’s biggest competitor when it comes to search; it is also cutting costs by letting Yahoo handle ad sales for premium search advertisers.

- Microsoft’s Bing will now be the search engine on all Yahoo sites.

- Yahoo will provide the relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

- Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business.

- Self-serve advertising for both companies will go through Microsoft’s AdCenter platform.

- Microsoft will compensate Yahoo through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo’s network.

- The term of the agreement is 10 years.

Full press release below:

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Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape

Global Deal Creates Better Choice for Consumers and Advertisers

SUNNYVALE, CA and REDMOND, WA — July 29, 2009 — Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

For Web users and advertisers, this deal will accelerate the pace and breadth of innovation by combining both companies’ complementary strengths and search platforms into a market competitor with the scale to fuel sustained development in search and search advertising. Users will find what they care about faster and with more personal relevance. Microsoft’s competitive search platforms will lead to more value for advertisers, better results for Web publishers, and increased innovation and efficiency across the Internet.

Under this agreement, Yahoo! will focus on its core business of providing consumers with great experiences with the world’s favorite online destinations and Web products.

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry, and I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz. “Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides. Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers. Finally, this deal will help us increase our investments in priority areas in winning audience properties, display advertising capabilities and mobile experiences.”

Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search. With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Ballmer. “Success in search requires both innovation and scale. With our new Bing search platform, we’ve created breakthrough innovation and features. This agreement with Yahoo! will provide the scale we need to deliver even more rapid advances in relevancy and usefulness. Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”

“This deal fits the long-term strategic direction of Yahoo! to remain the world’s leading online media company and Carol Bartz has the full and unanimous support of the Yahoo! Board behind this deal,” said Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo! Inc. “This is a significant opportunity for us. Microsoft is an industry innovator in search and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future.”

The key terms of the agreement are as follows:

· The term of the agreement is 10 years;

· Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing Web search platforms;

· Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology;

· Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process;

· Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising business and sales force;

· Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo! properties, including the user experience for search, even though it will be powered by Microsoft technology;

· Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated (O&O) and affiliate sites;

o Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first five years of the agreement; and

o Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

· Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in that country;

· At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million; and

· The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

The agreement does not cover each company’s Web properties and products, email, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.

The transaction will be subject to regulatory review. The agreement entered into today anticipates that the parties will enter into more detailed definitive agreements prior to closing. Microsoft and Yahoo! expect the agreement to be closely reviewed by the industry and government regulators, and welcome questions. The companies are hopeful that closing can occur in early 2010.

The companies have established a website at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com to provide consumers, advertisers and publishers with additional information about the benefits of the agreement.

Conference Call – 5:30 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, July 29

Yahoo! and Microsoft will host a conference call with Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss the agreement at 5:30 a.m. Pacific/8:30 a.m. Eastern Time today. To listen to the call, please dial 1-866-515-2908 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-399-5122 international, reservation number: 47968026. A live webcast of the call can be accessed through Yahoo!’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/results.cfm. In addition, an archive of the webcast will be available through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available for two weeks following the conference call by calling 1-888-286-8010 in the U.S. and Canada; +1-617-801-6888 international, reservation number: 91217610.

Reviews: Bing, Google
Tags: bing, microsoft, Search, Yahoo

Bing is the New Google, In One Way …

Bing is the New Google, In One Way …: "

It’s official: Yahoo is dumping its own search technology in favor of Microsoft’s Bing. Although searches conducted on Yahoo will still have the company’s branding and interface, for at least the next decade, the results will be based on Bing’s algorithms.

However, this isn’t the first time in Yahoo’s 15 year history that it has ceded its search business to a competitor. From 2000 to 2004, Yahoo search results were powered by a relatively new up-and-comer: Google.

That deal allowed Google to grab enormous marketshare in terms of search volume, even if the search results themselves were showing up on Yahoo’s site. However, when Yahoo dumped Google in favor of its own search technology in 2004, they estimated that they’d instantly have grabbed back better than 50 percent of the search market.

But at that point, consumers had come to so strongly favor Google’s search technology that the battle was already effectively over, and Google went on an unprecedented tear of adding market share month after month, largely at the expense of Yahoo.

Now that Yahoo is once again in the position of having someone else power its search results, what can we expect? For one, their hopes of ever competing again as a search technology provider are gone. It’s now Bing versus Google, with Yahoo providing the scale and advertising support that Microsoft will need to have half a chance.

But it also reminds us that loyalty is a powerful thing in search. When Yahoo flipped the switch to its own search technology back in 2004, they were thinking that most users would stay on Yahoo. But as the next five years would prove, that was anything but the case, as users migrated to Google’s superior search engine and results.

Microsoft and Yahoo have finally done what was envisioned when a $44 billion acquisition was proposed in early 2008: create a viable alternative to Google. History tells us, however, that this will do little more than artificially inflate search marketshare unless that combined the two companies can build a better search engine.

Reviews: Bing, Google, Yahoo!
Tags: bing, Google, microsoft, search engines, Yahoo

Google vs. Microsoft: Will This Time Be Different?

Google vs. Microsoft: Will This Time Be Different?: "

The deal is done: Yahoo Search is soon to be Bing. Yahoo cuts costs by ditching search technology, both companies share ad revenue, but most importantly, Microsoft now controls a bit less than 1/3 of the search engine market. All of this money, deal-making, and reinvention is designed for one purpose: to take down Google.

While this is the fourth reincarnation of the Microsoft search engine, make no mistake: this is Microsoft’s best shot yet at beating its arch rival on its home turf. It’s never put so many resources towards that goal. With that in mind, will Microsoft knock its greatest threat down a peg, or will billions of dollars be flushed down the drain? The result of the Bing push will ripple across all layers of the web for years to come.

Let’s Remember How We Got to This Point

We need to put the competition in historical context. While Google has remained Google since 1997, Microsoft search has been through no less than four major incarnations since its inception in 1998. Each one has failed to make any sort of dent in Google’s dominating market share.

For years, Microsoft didn’t take search very seriously – it launched the MSN Search engine and utilized search listings from others – Inktomi (the HotBot search engine, ironically acquired by Yahoo), Looksmart, AltaVista, etc. However, as it saw Google rapidly rise in power (thanks in part to powering Yahoo search), the company finally created its own search technology, around 2004-2005.

By then, though, Microsoft was already being left behind:

July 2005 Market Share:

- Google: 36.5%

- Yahoo: 30.5%

- Microsoft: 15.5%

Source: ZDNet

In 2006, Microsoft launched the second incarnation of its search engine, Windows Live Search. At this point, Google was starting to break away from the pack, and Microsoft’s numbers started to shrink. The numbers were not pretty:

December 2006 Market Share:

- Google:47.3%

- Yahoo: 28.5%

- Microsoft: 10.5%

Source: SearchEngineLand

In March 2007, Microsoft decided to separate search from the rest of Windows Live. It was rebranded to Live Search (if you’re counting, this is Microsoft search’s 3rd incarnation).

But the numbers from 2008 speak for themselves:

March 2008 Market Share:

- Google: 59.8%

- Yahoo: 21.3%

- Microsoft: 9.4%

Source: Mashable

The Bing Era Is Different

Since Bing arrived late this May, Microsoft’s promotion and push for the product has been unprecedented: $100 million in marketing, including an array of commercials and that weird Hulu infomercial that Olivia Munn hosted.

Now we can couple that with the most radical shift in search engine market share since the dot com boom era. If we look at the comScore June 2009, we see the following:

Microsoft, formerly at about 8% share (though that number’s fluctuating since Bing is so new), will now jump up to 28% market share, giving it the biggest leverage it has ever had. Still, it will be fragmented, and just because Microsoft will have a lot more users doesn’t mean it’ll keep them.

It doesn’t mean it’ll convert them from Google, either.

This Could Be the Last Stand

Microsoft is unleashing its full arsenal of engineers, finances, resources, partnerships, and cunning in its push to bring Google back to earth. They have made a multi-billion dollar bet with Bing and the Yahoo search deal, so you can bet Microsoft will do all it must to get a positive return.

Does Bing + Yahoo search represent Microsoft’s best shot at defeating Google? Unequivocally. Are were certain that Microsoft has a strategy for stealing market share? Absolutely.

Will it work? While we still believe Google’s not going anywhere, you never know what can happen when two titans go to all-out war. It fosters innovation, opens up the door to innovative startups, and keeps big corporations on their toes. Google’s needed a legitimate competitor for years. We finally have one, even if it’s made up of many complicated parts.

Reviews: Bing, Google, Mashable
Tags: Google, microsoft, Search, Yahoo

Eat This, Apple: Palm Pre Gets an Unofficial Google Voice App

Eat This, Apple: Palm Pre Gets an Unofficial Google Voice App: "

Well, you win some, you lose some. A couple of days after Apple banned all Google Voice-related applications from its App Store, a Google Voice app has appeared for the Palm Pre.

Though this is an unofficial application, and – according to the thread on PreCentral, not without bugs – this is a double win for Palm. It sorely lacks applications, and now it’s gotten several in the span of a few days, one of them being unavailable on the iPhone. Baby steps, Palm, baby steps.

Reviews: Google Voice
Tags: App, applications, Google Voice, palm, Palm Pre

HOW TO: Deal With Social Networking Overload

HOW TO: Deal With Social Networking Overload: "

Alexandra Levit is a Wall Street Journal columnist and the author of They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, How’d You Score That Gig?, and Success for Hire. Read her blog or on Twitter @alevit.

As a career and workplace writer, I get asked all the time: “I feel like I’m on social network overload. I’m a member of so many different sites, and I’m not sure how I should differentiate my presence on each one. For example, should I be “friends” with the same colleagues on every network?”

It’s a great question. Figuring why you’re joining social networks and how best to use them is the first step in coping with social networking overload. Here is a four step plan for helping you figure out how to keep up with your social media universe and get over that overloaded feeling.

1. Ask Yourself Why

The first step is to ask yourself why you joined each site. Was it because everyone else was doing it? Was it because you heard about it on Mashable or from one of your social networking idols and felt compelled to have a presence? If you don’t have a genuine purpose for participating in the network, you might want to think about stopping your activity there. I learned the hard way that joining too many social networks means that you can’t concentrate properly on the ones that are truly important to you.

When you’re overloaded, people may try to engage with you, but you might ignore them simply because you can’t keep up from all the contact being generated by your diffuse presence. As my grandmother used to say, “the person who tries to please everyone pleases no one.”

2. Consider Your Purpose

Once you’ve narrowed down your top networks, consider what you value about each one. For instance, do you enjoy Facebook because it allows you to keep up with your niece and nephew who are growing up across the country? Do you like that you can use LinkedIn to research individuals working at the organizations with which you’d be most interested in working? Is Twitter the best way for you to communicate just-in-time information to your core audience?

In order to avoid duplicating your information on every network, think about your purpose for being on each one and limit your activity to that purpose.

3. Create Boundaries

A typical example is that many people I’ve chatted with recently have chosen to use Facebook for family and past and present friends, where they reserve LinkedIn for business contacts. Creating boundaries between social networks allows them to post personal information and photos without worrying that they’ve shared too much with managers or direct reports or even getting into trouble with HR (disclaimer: any information that you wouldn’t be comfortable showing your grandmother or religious officiant shouldn’t really be on any social network, because on most networks, you never truly know who might be able to gain access without your express knowledge). On the other hand, they can feel more comfortable promoting themselves and their achievements on LinkedIn and don’t have to be as concerned about coming across as a braggart to friends and family.

4. Communicate Your Plan

You don’t have to be “friends” with the world on every social network, and you don’t have to import status updates and news items to every network either. My recommendation is to simply make clear to your contacts what you are using the various networks for. If a colleague asks to be your Facebook friend but you are using Facebook exclusively to keep up with your college buddies, just tell her so politely and invite her to connect on LinkedIn.

Being honest upfront very well may save you from an awkward situation later. In terms of the networks you already have a widespread presence on, consider making good use of the privacy settings (Facebook and Twitter have fairly comprehensive offerings) so that you don’t accidentally overstep the boundaries you’ve worked so carefully to create.

More social media resources from Mashable:

- HOW TO: Make Firefox Your Productivity Machine

- 14 iPhone Apps With Push Notification for Productivity

- HOW TO: Live Inside Twitter and Still Stay Productive

- 7 Productivity Tips for Freelancers and Web Workers

- HOW TO: Simplify Your Social Media Routine

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, arekmalang

Reviews: Facebook, LinkedIn, Mashable, Twitter, iStockphoto
Tags: business, facebook, linkedin, social media, social networking, social networking overload, twitter

Ashton Hits 3 Million Twitter Followers, But Who’s Still Counting?

Ashton Hits 3 Million Twitter Followers, But Who’s Still Counting?: "

We’re not sure that anybody cares at this point, but Twitter’s most popular user has broken another milestone: 3 million followers.

It took Ashton Kutcher more than four months to reach 1 million Twitter followers. It only took him a month and a half to double his following to 2 million. And now, he has 3 million people following his tweets, wherever they come from.

But does his personal rise matter to the social media world anymore? It’s strange to think that just a few months ago the entire Twitterverse was obsessed with his race to a million with CNN. It was a big part of what defined Twitter, especially as media outlets worldwide grabbed the story.

We think that Twitter users cared because it was still a novelty back then. Twitter was a quirky little service that only the “in-crowd” was using. Now it’s mainstream. Countless celebrities are connecting with fans via the microblogging tool while businesses and media organizations are joining Twitter in droves. In the past, Ashton was the celebrity to follow. Now you can almost certainly find the people that interest you most, as they’ve all joined since Ashton-Oprah rush.

In fact, Ashton’s growth from two million to three million followers was slower than his rise from one million to two million. He’s still insanely popular, but now the Twitterverse is bigger than even @aplusk.

Reviews: Twitter
Tags: ashton kutcher, twitter

Firefox: 1,000,000,000 Downloads

Firefox: 1,000,000,000 Downloads: "

As we reported yesterday, Firefox was on track to pass one billion downloads at some point on Friday. That point is now, as the counter on the Spread Firefox site as well as the Firefox Counter Twitter account are sporting numbers in the 10 digits.

Mozilla plans to launch the website onebillionplusyou.com on Monday, but for now, has provided a number of graphics to mark the event.

Of course, more important than total downloads is the actual percentage of active web users that use the browser. Recent stats peg Firefox with 22 percent of the browser market, up about 4 percent from this time last year. Meanwhile, Safari continues to grow, while upstart Google Chrome is slowly gaining adoption. All of this continues to come at the expense of Internet Explorer, which is still steadily losing market share.

Reviews: Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Twitter
Tags: Firefox, mozilla, web browsers