Yahoo still taking the fight to Bing

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 25 Aug 2009 at 08:11

Yahoo says it has revamped its search to compete against Microsoft's Bing - even though it relies on the Redmond giant to power its queries.

The announcement of plans to put a new face on Yahoo Messenger and Mail, as well as adding functions to its search engine, came after news that Google and Yahoo each lost a fraction of a point of US search share to Microsoft last month. Microsoft gained 0.5% in July, but still holds only 8.9% of the search market, compared to 64.7% for Google and 19.3% for Yahoo.

"We are not a version of Bing," claims Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president of Yahoo. "We are Yahoo and that will continue. We collaborate on the back-end but we are competitors on the front-end."

At the end of July, Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10-year deal under which search on Yahoo's websites will be generated by Microsoft's new Bing search engine. The companies hope the deal will take effect early next year.

We are not a version of Bing. We are Yahoo and that will continue

Microsoft will license Yahoo's search technology, allowing it to integrate certain aspects of it into Bing. Microsoft's advertising search product, AdCenter, will replace Yahoo's equivalent product, Panama.

Raghavan claims that when Microsoft sends ads along with its answers to queries, Yahoo may or may not use all of them, depending on a complex formula.

A new series of boxes to the left of search results and ads will give users more ways to make use of what they have found, says Larry Cornett, Yahoo vice president of search products.

A box powered by security company McAfee will filter dangerous links. Videos will play without leaving the search page.

A box to sites such as Yelp, which provides user feedback on stores and restaurants, can also be clicked to check out the quality of a restaurant without leaving the search page.