Yahoo and Microsoft Gang up Against Google

YaSoft or MicroHoo? Yahoo and Microsoft have reached agreement on a long-awaited web search partnership that will unite the two companies against market leader Google.

Under the no-cash deal, Yahoo will use Microsoft's new Bing search engine on its own sites, while Yahoo will act as the exclusive global sales force for the companies' premium search advertisers.

According to research firm ComScore, Google has a 65 per cent share of the lucrative search market. The combined forces of Yahoo and Microsoft will have a 30 per cent market share.

Yahoo, which last year turned down a $US47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft, said it stood to gain about $US500 million in annual operating income and $US200 million in capital expenditure savings through the agreement with the software giant.

Yahoo also estimated the deal would provide it with a $US275 million benefit to annual operating cash flow.

"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," Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz said in a statement.

The partnership, Microsoft said, "will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry."

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the deal will enable Bing to better compete against Goggle, as well as attract more users and advertisers.

"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," Ballmer said.

"This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search."

The agreement, which has a 10-year term, will be subject to review by US regulatory authorities, the companies said.

It is restricted to internet search and related advertising revenue, while the pair would retain full autonomy on other properties and products such as email, instant messaging and display advertising.

Calling the link-up a "significant opportunity," Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock said the company's board backed it with its "full and unanimous support."

"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," he said.

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Google Releases Its Fifth Generation Search Appliance

Google has rolled out the fifth generation of its yellow Google search appliance, which give enterprise content systems secure search capabilities.

"When we launched the first Google search appliance five years ago, we had a vision to make search inside of business as simple and effective as searching on Google.com," said Dave Girouard, Google Enterprise boss in a statement.

"By combining Google's deep knowledge in search with more understanding and control for environments behind the firewall, we are helping businesses keep pace with the velocity of information."

The yellow rack-mount has come of age, according to Google's spin doctors, and now happily searches across 220 file formats and almost anything you can connect to server.

The fifth birthday announcement included talk of 'significant performance increases' in the SAML(Security Assertion Markup Language) -based authentication API (Application Programming Interface).

A new site has been rolled out for Google Enterprise Labs, which gives yellow-box-users a heads-up on new technologies, like DIY KeyMatch to pick particular pages for search terms.

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Google Closing Gap With Chinese Rival Search Engine 'Baidu'

Web search leader Google says it is closing the gap with rival Baidu in China, after years of trying to increase market share in the world's second-largest internet arena.

Google has gained more market share in China after it announced its partnership with Sina, a major Chinese internet portal. It has also recently formed another partnership with popular website Tianya.cn.

"We are closing up the gap with them (Baidu)," said Rebecca Kuei, Google's head of sales and business development for Taiwan and Hong Kong, declining to give specific figures.

Baidu led China's market in the second quarter with a 58.1 per cent share, but rising only about 1 percentage point from the previous quarter's 57 per cent, while Google gained a 22.8 per cent market share, up around 4 percentage points from the previous quarter, according to Analysys International.

With over 162 million web users, China is the world's largest internet market, after the United States.

Google will continue to use similar business strategies throughout Asia to partner with major local internet firms to expand in the region, Kuei said, since many users in Asia still prefer to use local search engines.

In Taiwan, Google has partnerships with PC Home Online and Yam.com, while in South Korea it works closely with Daum Communications Corp.

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