In December 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo announced an new long term deal that would have Microsoft"s Bing search service as the core technology behind Yahoo"s search engine; the deal was supposed to last 10 years. Now a new report claims that Yahoo is looking to make a new deal and perhaps replace Microsoft entirely.
AllThingsD.com reports, via unnamed sources, that Yahoo is holding a major "offsite" meeting of its major executives today. The subject of discussion at this meeting is nothing less than the future of the company, with subjects such as mass layoffs of workers, selling off businesses and more as part of the proceedings.
The report also claims that Yahoo executives will also be discussing how it could approach Microsoft in talks to change its current search and advertising partnership deal. Even more surprisingly is word that Yahoo could try to talk with Google about it taking over Yahoo"s search business.
All of these ideas are floating about thanks largely to Yahoo"s new CEO Scott Thompson, who came on board in January. It seems that Thompson is wasting no time in trying to jump start the company by making major changes and that may include its relationship with Microsoft.
The Bing search service has made some inroads in taking on Google"s business. In January, it was revealed that Bing had become the number two search provider in the US, finally getting ahead of Yahoo. If one combines Yahoo"s search marketplace share, which is powered by Bing, with Bing"s own stand alone service, Microsoft now controls 29.1 percent of US search results.
If Yahoo were to dump Bing for Google, it would certainly put a big dent in Microsoft"s efforts to take away some of Google"s market share.