Bing + Yahoo | The end of a internet search ICON

Bing Absorbs Yahoo Search To Take On Google

Yahoo began in 1994 under its short lived name, Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. Its creators were Jerry Yang and David Filo, who would later rename the site Yahoo. With the help of a dictionary and the acronym which stood for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," Yahoo! was born.

The two Electrical Engineering graduate students from Stanford University wanted to create a website that would bring together the best content on the internet and at the tip of the users fingertips. It started out as a guide to the web and soon developed into a full fledged search engine.

Yahoo wasn't alone in 1994. There were multiple search engines competing for the #1 spot at the time. Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, and AltaVista were just a few. Once Yahoo's search was fine tuned, it quickly outpaced its competitors and became the most popular search engine in the word. But that was short lived thanks to Google. Since then Google has marched ahead of the pack with over a 70% dominance in the search market alone.

And last month, Bing, formerly known as Live Search passed up Yahoo for the #2 search spot on June 4th commanding a 16% share in less than 2 weeks.

This may have been a signal to Yahoo that a change was in order. Life for Yahoo began as a search engine, and 15 years later they will search no more. It was announced today that Microsoft will now be taking over the reigns in the search department. Yahoo Search will now simply be Bing, and the rest of Yahoo! will remain intact.

As Ryan Singel of Wired put it "Yahoo is now an entertainment portal, a confederation of “destinations.” It is the new AOL, minus original content."

Will the combined resources of Bing and the search engine formerly known as Yahoo Search be enough to take on Google? With a 26% share according to the most recent Hitwise numbers, Bing has some ground to gain. But perhaps a good foothold is a proper start.