Rumors are beginning to swirl and the questions are being asked. Are Facebook and Yahoo teaming up to create some sort of Search Engine Superpower? What will this mean for Search Engine Market Share? And finally, what about Yahoo’s current partnership with Microsoft?
Yahoo has certainly taken a hit of the past few years in their market share, but ever since CEO Marissa Mayer took over at Yahoo, it looks like they are slowly starting to right the ship. The rumors swirling around the internet this past week mention that Marissa have been in talks with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandber about teaming together to create a sort of “Social Search Engine”. With Yahoo fighting to get back into the search engine game full time and Facebook looking to aggressively break into the Search Engine market, this partnership seems to make a lot of sense for both sides.
One not-so-minor issue is standing in the way. Yahoo has a 10 year deal with Microsoft (Bing) that is only 3 years completed. In order for Yahoo to break away from this deal and team up with Facebook, there will likely be a long legal process with a lot of unflattering press for all parties. This issue alone has a lot of people skeptical of any type of Yahoo and Facebook partnership in the near future.
If this partnership did work out, what might the product be like? And will it have any type of chance to compete with Google? Mark Zuckerberg has openly stated how he thinks users have grown tired of the Google Experience and are ready for something new. This might be his first attempt at breaking into the Search Engine scene should a plan come together. Whether this partnership would just involve some tweaks like joint advertising and Yahoo powered searches on Facebook, or it could mean that they are trying to change the whole landscape of the search engine world and how people find information by creating an all new search engine. Many industry experts think that is too far-fetched, but personally I wouldn’t put anything past Mr. Zuckerberg yet.
The first step will be to see if Yahoo can cleanly break off its deal with Microsoft. Should that happen in the near future, we could soon be looking at a new search engine that will transform the way people find their information and how it is presented to the user. This week’s big announcement will certainly have techies and SEOers all riled up and waiting to hear more…
-Mike Fedotowsky
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