Microsoft and Yahoo have been engaged in a strange relationship for years now, but it is finally getting close to becoming official. The two Internet giants reached an agreement last summer, in which Yahoo practically handed over its search engine to Microsoft, but they haven’t been able to actually sign it until now. The deal was originally supposed to be finalized on October 27, but the companies said they needed more time. Now though, they’re ready and the deal will be signed by the end of the week, BoomTown reports.
Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft have confirmed this, but if everything goes according to plan, which it didn’t the last time, we should see a definitive agreement this week. The reason for the delays is simple enough, it’s a massive deal and the intricacies of getting the two search engines work together while keeping their separate identities took longer than the people at Microsoft and Yahoo had anticipated.
The two companies announced a huge but not totally unexpected deal in July. In it, Yahoo will hand over the technical side of its search engine to Microsoft and Bing will provide all of the results on any Yahoo property. Yahoo will keep its custom interface and can do what ever it wants with the actual data coming from Bing. The advertising on both search engines will be se… (read more)