Yahoo!7
has bucked a global alliance with Microsoft and Bing and struck an agreement
with Google for search in Australia. That means both search results and ads
served will be powered by Google.
In 2009
Microsoft and Yahoo! signed a 10 year deal whereby Bing would power Yahoo!
Search.
That
agreement looked like including Australia up until earlier this year when the
two failed to reach an agreement locally. Because it is a joint venture in
Australia with Seven West Media, Yahoo!7 is not bound by the terms of the
global search alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo.
Both sides
have blamed the other for failing to agree a deal, a situation that has not
helped relations strained by intense local rivalry.
Yahoo!7
then approached Google. The two have now negotiated a deal. It is understood
that the deal is not exclusive which means the two are free to work with other
partners.
Yahoo!7
has played down the implications for staff as a result of the deal.
"Yahoo!7
can confirm that we are undertaking changes to evolve the Yahoo! Search
Marketing business in Australia," said Amanda Millar, director of trade
marketing and corporate affairs at Yahoo!7.
"In regards to the rollout of the Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance, unlike
other markets globally, Microsoft made a decision to launch Bing in Australia without
a managed migration of advertisers from the YSM Panama platform.
"As a result of this we have undertaken changes in our business which will
see the majority of our search inventory transition to the Google Ad platform.
This has led to a small number of redundancies representing less than 2% of our
workforce.
"We
will undertake a planned migration to the Google Ad platform over the next few
weeks. We believe the decision by Microsoft to launch Bing without us is not in
the best interest of the Australian search industry."
Google has
over 90% of the local search market. Bing has around 5%.
