{"id":394096,"date":"2010-03-05T16:42:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T21:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"tag:contentnext.com,2010-03-05:article\/419-yahoo-loses-exclusive-t-mobile-usa-search-deal-to-google"},"modified":"2010-03-05T17:01:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T22:01:42","slug":"yahoo-loses-exclusive-t-mobile-usa-search-deal-to-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/394096","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo Loses Exclusive T-Mobile USA Search Deal To Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

T-Mobile USA has ended its year-old exclusive search deal with Yahoo, and has replaced the company with its chief rival—Google (NSDQ: GOOG<\/a>). <\/p>\n

The deal shifts the U.S. mobile search dominance away from Yahoo and in favor of Google, which now works with two of the top four carriers. The hand-off between Yahoo and Google was completed as recently as Wednesday, and when visiting the T-Mobile portal from a BlackBerry today, it showed Google as the prominent search provider at the top of the screen—not Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO<\/a>). <\/p>\n

A Yahoo spokesperson confirmed it was no longer working with T-Mobile for search, and a T-Mobile USA spokesperson declined to comment.\n<\/p>\n

Sources say T-Mobile is also working with search provider Medio Systems, which typically indexes and returns results for content, including ringtones and wallpapers, unlike Google, which returns results for the web.<\/p>\n

While Yahoo is no longer providing mobile search, a spokesperson said it is still working with the fourth-largest U.S. carrier on other content services, such as Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, News, Sports, Finance and Flickr. Yahoo also continues to work for T-Mobile International in Europe, and more than 80 carrier partnerships around the globe. The shake-up follows the discovery earlier this week<\/a> that AT&T (NYSE: T<\/a>) replaced Google with Yahoo on the Motorola (NYSE: MOT<\/a>) BackFlip, a Google Android device. At the time, we wondered if T-Mobile USA would do the same for Android-based devices, but now that seems highly unlikely.<\/p>\n

The pay-off for the often pricey alliances between carriers and search providers is still largely unknown. While carriers can make it easy for a consumer to use one search provider over another, they are still at liberty to visit the search provider of their choice from the mobile browser. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT<\/a>) reportedly paid about $500 million to be the exclusive search provider on Verizon-branded phones<\/a>. Yahoo continues to work with AT&T, and T-Mobile and Sprint (NYSE: S<\/a>) now work with Google.<\/p>\n

The deals can apparently also fall apart quickly, too. A year ago in November, T-Mobile USA and Yahoo made a big splash<\/a> when their partnership was first unveiled. As part of it, T-Mobile revamped its entire portal strategy it calls web2go. Ironically, Yahoo first rolled out on T-Mobile in Europe, where it replaced Google. Since last year, Yahoo’s search was rolled out on most handsets, including feature phones, but not Android-based devices or Sidekicks.\n<\/p>\n

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