Yahoo has been making some changes to the way it operates, this has become more notorious over the last few days, as the company just announced a new upcoming messaging application and updates to some of their products. Now it seems that Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer is planning to step up the company’s role in web search with a new agreement with Google in which Yahoo Search will be powered by Google. This comes as a surprise after Microsoft amended its existing deal with Yahoo. The former Google employee, Marissa Mayer, seems to be taking Yahoo back into being a major site after years of living in the shadow of other ever-growing sites like Google and Bing.
Marissa Mayer is looking for new ways to keep Yahoo alive and expand its user base, even if that means making agreements with rival companies. Just after amending the terms of the search partnership with Microsoft on Wednesday, giving Yahoo more control over how search results are displayed in all platforms where Yahoo Search is present. Now the company’s search results and ads will be shown in 49% of the total amount of searches on the site, this will be implemented in desktop and mobile as well. The other 51% of searches will show results and also ads by Microsoft. This agreement will be present until the year 2020, when the 10-year pact is set to expire.
But something must not be going right with Yahoo and Microsoft’s search partnership (which is non-exclusive), as Marissa Mayer reached out to Google, her former employer, to give a part of Yahoo’s 49% search results share to Google; Meaning that Google will have some control over the search results and ads shown in Yahoo Search. This deal will continue to favor Yahoo, but Bing will still have the most control over Yahoo search results. The partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo has never been a great one as in the original deal (created in 2009 by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and Yahoo’s Carol Bartz, both former chief executives), Microsoft promised that Yahoo would see significative revenue from Bing ads, after failing to reach that goal, Yahoo complained and extended the original deal in 2013. This time, the deal was limited to the United States. The new deal between Google and Yahoo gives a feeling that Marissa Mayer once again doesn’t trust Microsoft enough to manage most of its search results.