Yahoo and Microsoft Potentially Forming Adorable Little Search Alliance Against Google

Although Bill Gates failed at his attempts to buy Yahoo in 2008 with a £21.3bn bid, the two could be putting the past behind them with talks of a possible combined search engine, in an effort to battle the mighty Google for eyeballs on the web. 

Microsoft and Yahoo have recently been whispering over a possible search engine partnership. Google is, obv, the dominating search engine with a whopping 64.2 per cent of the “search share market”, and usages have expanded over the past year by 16.7 per cent. Google’s share in the market is representative of 6.1 billion searches, which is 400 per cent more than Yahoo Search.

Basically Yahoo has no chance on their own and has to turn to a company that is doing even worse than they are in a desperate attempt to stand a chance against the bully in the playground. Microsoft only had a 0.3 per cent growth over the past year and a 10.3 per cent hold of the search market. Really? Microsoft has a search engine?

Our maths whiz tells us that if the two join forces their share would be around 26% of the search market, which is still nothing, but growth is expected as it would be the main alternative to Google and followers of their other products may be compelled to use their search engine. If the deal goes ahead, Microsoft takes on the searches, it’s reported that Yahoo will take responsibility for the pair’s display advertising business – Silicon Alley Insider’s sources suggest that the most effective option will be for Yahoo to buy MSN outright.

But planning to give the Americans a run for their money is Stephen Wolfram, a London-born physicist, who is to launch a new Internet search engine in May called Wolfram Alpha. If it works it would be able to understand people’s questions and respond to them directly, rather than deploying the keyword-mongering algorithms used by Google et al. What Wolfram is proposing is a computer system that would understand the human language without fumbling around to find the proper keyword, as the A.I. will be able to understand us. 

There are many alternative search engines out there, but they just aren’t being utilized; Google has become such a common phrase in our vocabulary it’s hard to even think to use another method. It’ll have to take either a brilliantly intuitive algorithmic shift, or a spectacular rebranding exercise, to even begin chipping into Google’s monopoly. One feels that doing either will prove too radical for two such enormous companies.

Posted by Trista Orchard in Sci-tech | April 14, 2009 3:43PM |