The once-mighty Yahoo! seems to be in bad shape.
After a rough few years and an attempt at a rebrand, Yahoo! still seems to be losing ground in the ongoing search engine war.
Back in 2009, Yahoo! teamed up with Microsoft to combine search traffic and advertising revenue. In fact, this may have been a company-saving move since it looks like Microsoft is acting more like a subsidizer than a partner.
In their most recent report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo! said that almost a third (31%) of their search revenue came from Microsoft, not from their own search engine. This kind of figure isn’t good news for either Yahoo! or Microsoft, even as Bing continues to (very) slowly take market share away from Google.
But where does that leave Yahoo!? In early 2015, Yahoo! is free to leave their current deal with Microsoft, but it may be unlikely that they’ll go over to Google since that move was previously blocked by the antitrust wing of the SEC.
Still, as shown in other industries such as airlines, automakers, and even beer, antitrust stipulations seem to be getting quite loose. And on the other hand, Yahoo! might shrink to the point where it could be acquired outright by a larger player or become inextricably dependent on Microsoft for survival.
At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see where Yahoo! ends up in a few years…and in what form.
