When Marissa Mayer took over as the CEO of Yahoo, it quickly became apparent that she did not like the deal with Microsoft to supplement its search services. There are many logical reasons why she protested the deal (and still does to this day) and she is trying to use every trick in her power to derail and slow down the agreement.
Mayer came from the largest search engine on the planet, Google, before taking to the top spot at Yahoo. Considering that Yahoo used to be a search powerhouse and that Bing is now number two, she wants Yahoo to return to search greatness but it’s hard to do that with this ugly Microsoft partnership in the way.
To help slow down the deployment of Bing as a replacement for Yahoo’s own search service, Mayer recently proclaimed that the CEO transition from Ballmer to Nadella was a justifiable reason to slow the rollout. Recode notes that the rollout of Bing in Hong Kong and Taiwan was delayed and the argument for the slowdown was the appointment of Nadella.
Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10-year agreement for the search service but Mayer wants out and she is not shy about stating it publicly. She believes that search is a core service of the site and by allowing a third-party to control the experience; it puts Yahoo at a disadvantage.
Seeing that Yahoo has not found a way to remove the partnership with Bing, we suspect that Microsoft is not willing to rescind it’s agreement either as the company wants to take ahold of the largest piece of the search pie. More so, Yahoo has not found any legal loopholes that would allow it to escape the agreement, which is why Mayer is likely intentionally slowing down the deployment.
With the partnership going sour and Yahoo wanting to distance itself from Bing, where there was once hope that Yahoo and Microsoft would partner on more services, it would appear that the likelihood of that happening anytime soon is quite small to no chance at all.
Source: Recode