Yahoo and eBay recently announced a wide-ranging agreement aimed at helping them in their never-ending battle for market share against search engine powerhouse Google. Who will benefit? And do they have a hope of succeeding? Keep reading to find out more.
Rumors that surfaced a while ago – later confirmed by both companies – that Microsoft was in talks with Yahoo to purchase the venerable search engine brought into focus just how cutthroat the competition in the search engine field had become. Those talks fell through, but that doesn’t mean the companies competing, or expecting to compete, against unstoppable search engine Google felt any more secure. Case in point: the recently-announced partnership between Yahoo and eBay.
Don’t get me wrong; the deal makes a lot of sense, and has a lot to recommend it, as I’ll be explaining in just a bit. And unlike the Microsoft-Yahoo rumors, the partnership certainly stops short of an outright merger. (On the other hand, with Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker refusing to comment on the possibility of a merger with eBay, anything could happen). But I think it was clearly born of two firms running more than a little scared when facing an apparently unbeatable foe, and deciding that there had to be more strength in numbers.
eBay and Yahoo aren’t alone in feeling that way, which is why I think you can expect to see more of these deals in the future. (In fact, when I look at Ask.com and don’t see the company making these kinds of arrangements, it makes me wonder how serious they are about competing in the field). If the agreement between eBay and Yahoo is any indication, these deals will aim for areas in which Google is somewhat less strong, or on which Google has not focused quite as much effort.
An Internet search engine and an Internet auction site wouldn’t seem to have enough common ground to strike up a partnership on the face of it, but of course Yahoo and eBay are far more than that these days. This is why the deal is so wide-ranging. But I’ve been getting way ahead of myself; let me back up and talk about the actual terms of the agreement.
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