Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission yesterday gave Microsoft its blessing to integrate Yahoo!7 Search into its own search engine, Bing. The partnership is reportedly part of a 10-year deal between the two companies in whch Yahoo will handle advertising for both companies.
The ACCC’s decision, which can be viewed here, found that the partnership was “unlikely to result in a substantial lessening of competition in the relevant markets”. To wit, nearly 80 per cent of the search engine market is held by Google Australia and Google itself; Bing and Yahoo!7 holds less than 7 per cent combined.
The announcement is the latest development in a much broader rivalry between Microsoft and search engine giant, Google. It follows recent industry rumblings that Microsoft is in talks to pay companies to delist themselves from Google’s search engine. In other words, Microsoft is spending up big to stand against Google.
Microsoft did it once before – successfully – when it challenged Sony and Nintendo for the video games market with its Xbox brand of game consoles. If that experience was anything to go by, Microsoft can afford to haemmorhage money into this venture for a good seven years.JOIN THE POPSCI AU FACEBOOK GROUP
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