Yahoo isn’t a healthy search engine. In fact, they’re not much of a search engine at all anymore. They no longer compete for advertisements, because Microsoft runs their advertisements. They no longer worry about their search algorithm; they’ve abandoned it and let Microsoft run their SERP. Now, Yahoo is letting things slide just a little further by finalizing their back-end handover to Microsoft in Australia, Mexico, and Brazil.
According to the Yahoo Search Blog, the “Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance” hit this milestone on January 13th when deployment was completed in these three countries. The initial deployment of the back-end Microsoft functionality happened in the U.S. and Canada, and it’s expected that the majority of Yahoo properties will be making the transition. However, that’s not the case worldwide; Japan’s Yahoo, and the leading search engine of that country, decided to work with Google because of Google’s language capabilities.
The transition to Microsoft began in August of last year, and the North American transition only took a few weeks. The more gradual roll-out worldwide may be an indicator of anything from lower prioritization to localization issues to difficulties in finalizing decisions for those specific regions. Every Yahoo site that adopts the technology, however, will be using the Microsoft Web, Image, and Video results across all platforms — desktop, mobile, etc.
The search algorithm isn’t the only item being abandoned. Yahoo is also “sunsetting” nearly a dozen of their less profitable services. For Yahoo, the shift doesn’t represent “giving up,” but narrowing their focus. Already owning the second largest share of the search market (although, admittedly, that’s only 15%), Yahoo intends to make their more popular additional features more appealing. This includes increased care and attention to services like Yahoo Answers, Yahoo Mail, Flickr, and more.
