Questions not answered on Microsoft / Yahoo deal

July 29, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

dunceDespite the large amount of text coming from Yahoo about its ten-year search deal with Microsoft, there are a few questions still nagging the VentureBeat staff. We don’t expect to get answers, but we need to get the questions out there anyway.

1. What happens to Yahoo BOSS? Yahoo’s press release states that “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.” It seems like Yahoo is saying that Microsoft will only serve the Internet search engine and provide ads against those search results. But what about Yahoo’s BOSS search API? Will it be replaced by a Bing API? Are there smaller companies dependent on BOSS that will now get unplugged? That seems likely, but we haven’t been able to get a statement from the company yet. Read/Write Web editor Marshall Kirkpatrick suggests that Yahoo provide a walkthrough of all its search-related services and explain what will happen to each.

2. How will Yahoo and Microsoft cooperate and compete at the same time? It’s easy to say the two companies will “continue to compete vigorously.” But what happens when the employees doing the actual competing recognize ways they could win against each other by messing with the cooperative search deal? You’d be a failure as a product manager if you didn’t push to use Microsoft’s enormous Yahoo search engine traffic to boost your product or service’s adoption and usage.

3. What’s Yahoo’s core competency now? Having abandoned search, what does Yahoo have left? The name of the company’s mobile app is Yahoo OneSearch. Will Yahoo still focus it products and services around search and gloss over the fact that Microsoft is handling the actual search and any ads served against it? That seems like the only viable option. Without search, Yahoo is a bunch of websites that don’t tie together.

[Image from Conspiracy Culture]

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Whatever the outcome. I like it, and think it will sure be interesting
    to see the competition of Microsoft and Yahoo pitted against Google and
    maybe even Twitter. Although it sure is hard to come up with a concept that
    even comes close to beating the current Twitter Marketing trend.

    Sounds like advertising consolidation.
  • chrystalk
    I can’t believe this deal was in the making for ten years.
  • jbagley
    i will back google anytime, this firm has the confidence of the viewers..


    another saying is IF IN DOUBT GOOGLE IT ===== you can use this saying if you wish. i think it is a good advertising slogan