It is not every day of the week that you see fierce competitors team up to create a unified project. But exactly that has happened as Bing, Google and Yahoo have worked together to create schema.org.
Schema.org is a new site intended to help site owners with using a common set of schemas. This new initiative is "aimed at creating and supporting a common set of schemas for structured data markup on Web pages." The search giants worked together to create a one-stop shop for website owners and developers. Microsoft states:
Schema.org will become a one-stop shop for site owners and developers, providing the tips and tools necessary to help improve how their sites appear in search results on Bing, Google and Yahoo! It will also help search engines better understand websites, and moving forward, Bing will work jointly with the larger Web community and its search partners to extend the available schema categories. Consumers will also benefit from this effort by experiencing richer search experiences and content from a much broader set of publishers.
While this new initiative is definitely for the technical user, it should help to create a more unified playing field now that Google, Bing, and Yahoo are all onboard. The goal is to help site owners and developers improve how their sites appear in search results.
The collaboration is a positive sign that even though Google and Bing are fighting for marketshare, they are able to put aside differences to help out the average consumer.