Yahoo search - now powered by Bing - is still a search engine

by Steve Ragan - Aug 25 2010, 18:00

Yahoo Search has moved to Bing in the U.S. and Canada, but don’t say it's no longer a search engine. If you do, then according to the senior vice president of Search Products at Yahoo, you’re being irresponsible.

Microsoft and Yahoo teamed up over a year ago in order to challenge Google's dominance in the search market. On Tuesday, Yahoo’s search results in the U.S. and Canada started displaying the “Powered by Bing” mark, leading to many reports that the Yahoo search engine was dead.

“I’ve heard some innuendo that with Yahoo! Search transitioning certain back-end functions to Microsoft, we are no longer a ‘search engine.’ I find these comments amusing, but a little irresponsible,” commented Shashi Seth, the aforementioned VP of Search Products.

“People who assume that search is only about indexing, crawling and relevance of web documents are mistaken,” the Yahoo executive added.

The point of the company blog post by Seth was to highlight the fact that Yahoo supplements Bing’s search results with content gained via various partnerships with third parties other than Microsoft. This is what separates the platform from Bing itself, as there are hundreds of sources of data for information other than an index.

Seth explained that, when technologies are developed such as Yahoo’s search algorithms, they are kept in-house, but “as these companies become more successful, and as technology matures many building blocks of these products are outsourced - including the most critical components.”

As an example, Seth pointed to Boeing or Airbus aircrafts, saying: “They outsource their engines to Rolls Royce, United Technologies, and GE. But, does that mean that Boeing and Airbus are no longer airline manufacturers?”

Concluding with the fact that Yahoo “is investing in many areas that will redefine and reshape search,” Seth was clear with the message that Yahoo is still a search engine in a strong second place behind Google.

However, the point of the deal with Microsoft was not to hold second place to Google in the search market. Search really has nothing to do with it. The 10-year agreement with Yahoo and Microsoft is all about advertising.

Yahoo’s Web, Image, and Video searches are pulling from Bing, and now that the search part is finished, the aim is to include Microsoft’s AdCenter advertising platform within those results. This is expected to happen in October, according to Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.

Yahoo is expected to earn 88 percent of the ad revenue generated from the Bing-powered search results. This is because the partnership replaces Yahoo’s advertising platform with Microsoft’s. Some time later, earnings could rise or fall depending on who is managing sales to the top search advertisers.

Microsoft is looking for two things out of the deal: an actual profit for its online offerings, which have bled money over the years; and an understanding of user search habits. If the company understands how people search, and what they search for, Microsoft hopes to position Bing as a reliable alternative to Google and leverage this for more advertising share.

Still, there is a long way to go. Internet specialist comScore shows Google leading with 66 percent of the search market, whereas the combined efforts of Yahoo and Microsoft are pulling in just under 30 percent.

So is Yahoo search dead? No, Yahoo search is alive and well, if you ignore that its search power comes from Microsoft. As a bonus however, the technology once used by Yahoo could be implemented into Bing, because part of the deal with Yahoo means Microsoft gained exclusive rights to Yahoo’s search technologies and can integrate them if it so wishes.

For now, Bing is only powering English search on Yahoo in the U.S. and Canada. Other languages and regions are expected to be merged in the next year and throughout 2012.

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