A powerful new choice in search is coming
The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is a major initiative between our companies to create a competitive choice in search for advertisers and consumers. The combined scale will assist both companies in speeding the pace of innovation to improve the search user experience, as well as help advertisers get better results and help improve monetization for partners. 

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results. 

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

More volume, less effort.
Search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft, and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace, giving advertisers of all sizes access to a combined audience of 494 million searchers worldwide, 82 million across Europe for an average of 1.1B searches every months.1

Timing 

Following the completion of the Indian transition and the learning gathered in North America, Yahoo! and Microsoft have now begun transitioning European markets, with the UK, Ireland and France now complete. Germany, alongside Austria and Switzerland, will be the next European countries to transition, with the aim of completing the process by end of June 2012. Our goal is to provide a quality transition experience for partners and advertisers. If we feel that it would improve the overall experience, we may adjust the timing of the paid search transition in these markets. We will keep our advertisers and partners closely informed of our progress.

What People Are Saying 

Advertisers on the Deal
Sir Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive, WPP Group
“This is extremely encouraging and introduces more balance into the search and display markets," said Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of British advertising group WPP (WPP.L). "It is good for our clients and our agencies and for regulators." (Reuters; July 30, 2009)

What Experts and Analysts are Saying
Ross Sandler, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets
"Overall, it's a big positive for two companies that have been struggling to keep up with Google. This consolidates their resources and allows them to make a more concerted push as the No. 2 entity." (Reuters; July 29, 2009)

Consumer and Privacy-Related Comments
Jules Polonetsky, Co-chair and Director , Future of Privacy Forum
"We hope that this search deal leads to a period of aggressive privacy competition between Google and Microsoft and that consumers benefit from efforts to provide relevant services in a privacy smart manner." (The Future of Privacy Forum Blog; July 29, 2009)
1comScore qSearch (custom), February 2012