Astute web users (or perhaps those not glued to Google!) may have noticed Microsoft Live Search changing to Bing back in June 09: a much more solid and accurate search offering from Microsoft and a step forward in their ongoing battle against Google (hey, we’re #4 and #7 for “recruitment website design” so we like it! )

You may recall Microsoft courting Yahoo last year only to be rebuffed.

Yesterday (July 29) Microsoft inked a deal with Yahoo to provide Bing as the search engine for Yahoo sites.

Essentially, this means we now have 2 major search engines: Google and Bing. Only time will tell whether Google will lose any marketshare to this new joint offering. We’ll be keeping a close eye on our analytics to see how this plays out.

This could be seen as the end of an era – “Web 1.0″ if you like. Yahoo was the original start point for many web surfers, starting out as a directory of all known web pages and morphing into a search engine. Will it ultimately be swallowed up by Microsoft now that its founder Jerry Yang has less control? Only time will tell, but I for one would not be surprised.

Microsoft clearly has Google’s search and online apps in its sights just as Google is gunning for a share of Microsoft’s desktop market with Google Docs/Apps, Chrome, Android and even launching its own operating system to compete head on with Microsoft Windows. Owning Yahoo would increase Microsoft’s search footprint: an area totally dominated by Google. Microsoft has also recently announced free online versions of Office Word, Excel etc. to compete directly with Google Docs/Apps.

Competition is healthy and I think Google are a bit too powerful online right now (just as Microsoft are offline). Interesting times ahead!

Read more on the BBC website

Posted by Dave Bancroft on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 in Internet Marketing, Internet trends, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Web news.
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