Yahoo has struck a deal with Google to provide search results and advertising, six months after paring back a similar deal with Microsoft.
Yahoo will use Google’s advertising platform and search algorithms to serve an unspecified amount of search queries on Yahoo’s desktop and mobile Internet sites, the company said in a filing Tuesday that accompanied a quarterly earnings report. Google will pay Yahoo a portion of the ad sales for such searches, while Yahoo will pay fees for Google’s search and image results.
The deal gives Yahoo, a pioneer in search that has jettisoned much of its own Web-crawling technology, the ability to use its own resources to provide search results, or rely on the technology of Google or Microsoft.
After Microsoft’s merger talks with Yahoo collapsed in 2009, the two companies inked a deal that made Microsoft’s Bing the provider of Yahoo search results on desktop computers. Mobile search, the faster-growing area of search, was never included in the deal.
Marissa Meyer, an ex-Google executive who took the reins at Yahoo in 2012, was said to be uncomfortable with the 10-year pact.
In April, the companies announced changes to the agreement that allowed Yahoo to generate its own ads and search results, or use a third party’s, as long as Microsoft’s ads and technology were used for a majority of Yahoo’s desktop search results. Either company can terminate the deal beginning this month.
Microsoft, Yahoo said in its earnings release, “remains a strong partner.” Google’s offerings, the company said, complement Microsoft’s.
A Microsoft spokeswoman made a similar statement, indicating the Redmond company was committed to the deal. She said Microsoft currently provides a majority of the search results on Yahoo sites and expects that to continue.
Google executed about 64 percent of U.S. desktop searches in September, according to comScore, down from 67 percent a year earlier. Microsoft sites accounted for 20.7 percent, up from 19.4 percent.
Yahoo was third with 12.6 percent, up from 10 percent in 2014.
