Yahoo Japan picks Google over Microsoft
Microsoft may have nabbed a search partnership with Yahoo in the U.S. and beyond, but in Japan Google is the chosen one. Assuming the deal is allowed to go through, a prospect Microsoft seems none too happy about.
Microsoft and Yahoo have had a difficult and often tense relationship over the years. It looked, for a time, as though the former would acquire the latter outright, but the former CEO of Yahoo Jerry Yang blocked the deal. Once Carol Bartz took over, talks began once again.
These led to a search and advertising partnership which will see Bing power Yahoo’s search effort, with Yahoo selling advertising for the joint effort. The merging of the technology has now begun, with the partnership expected to be fully up and running by the beginning of 2011.
However, there’s an unexpected twist in this particular tale, with Yahoo Japan choosing to partner with Google instead of Microsoft. Yahoo Japan is a separate entity from the U.S. giant, although Yahoo does still own around 35 percent of Yahoo Japan. The majority shareholder is Softbank, and it’s for this reason that Yahoo Japan has gone in a different direction than its U.S. counterpart.
Yahoo Japan is the most popular search engine in Japan, accounting for more than 50 percent of all searches. Google is second on around 40 percent, with Microsoft only managing around 3 percent. This means the Yahoo/Google pact creates what can only be described as a monopoly in Japan, one that wouldn’t be allowed in the U.S. and Europe.
Which is exactly the line being taken by Microsoft, which has complained about the deal in a statement from Dave Heiner, a vice president and deputy general counsel for Microsoft. He draws attention to the fact that in 2008 the U.S. Department of Justice decided a deal between Google and Yahoo was anti-competitive. And this Japanese deal seems to be even more so.
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