"Advertisers will continue to pay Yahoo directly for clicks served by Yahoo from Yahoo’s Panama and Content Match marketplaces," said Yahoo in its statement. "Advertisers will pay Google directly for each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo owned and operated network or certain affiliate sites. Google will share a percentage of such revenue with Yahoo."
The two parties agreed to run this deal for the next four year and, if things go the right way, to extend it to ten years. At present time, the effects of the deal will only be visible to Yahoo customers in the US and Canada.
In related news, Yahoo and Google also agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services.
Are the two companies moving further for a bigger move? Well, Google Senior VP Omid Kordestani made sure these new deals are not interpreted as a sing of things to come:
"This is not a merger. Rather, we are merely providing access to our advertising technology to Yahoo! through our AdSense program," he wrote. "We also think this is good for competition. The truth is, this kind of arrangement is commonplace in many industries, and it doesn’t foreclose robust competition. Toyota sells its hybrid technology to General Motors, even though they are the number one and number two car manufacturers globally. Canon provides laser printer engines for HP, despite also competing in the broader laser printer market. Google and Yahoo will continue to be vigorous competitors, and that competition will help fuel innovation that is good for users."
So it happened once again: Google triumphed and Microsoft was left out of the game. Somebody must be steaming really bad in Redmond….