Just over a year after announcing plans to team up on search engine and advertising efforts, Yahoo (NASDAQ: [[ticker:YHOO]]) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MSFT]]) have completed a sizable leg of the search transition—Yahoo search results are now powered by Microsoft’s Bing in the U.S. and Canada, the companies said today.
The ten-year agreement that puts Redmond, WA-based Microsoft in control of search engine technology for both companies, and Sunnyvale, CA-based Yahoo in charge of sale and distribution of advertising for its search engine as well as Microsoft’s Bing, was finalized last July after more than a year of negotiations. As part of the deal, Microsoft agreed to pay Yahoo $150 million over three years for “transition and implementation costs,” and hire 550 Yahoo staffers to aid in the transition. The deal was approved by U.S. and European regulators in February.
Bing began testing its systems in preparation for the transition last month, and is ahead of schedule in rolling out its Bing-powered Yahoo U.S. and Canada search. The search capability is only available in English for now, but Bing says it will be adding new languages over the next few weeks and the months thereafter.
The next major transition in the works for the companies is the migration to Microsoft’s ad search platform, adCenter. Microsoft’s senior vice president of the online services division, Satya Nadella, wrote on the Bing blog that the companies are “optimistic about completing this phase later this fall.”
