According to The Sunday Telegraph Yahoo! is looking to get out of the 10-year deal it signed with Microsoft in 2009 as its search engine, Bing, has been unable to mount any serious challenge against Google. However Yahoo!'s own 'talent pool of expert programmers has depleted to the point it that is unable to strike out on its own,' forcing it to look elsewhere.
As such, Telegraph sources have revealed that Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo!, is in discussions with Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, about how the two companies can work more closely together.
Facebook and Yahoo! have already worked together on small projects, however board members are reported to be anticipating a more substantial collaboration around web-based search.
Facebook has already confirmed it plans to boost its web search facility, with Mark Zuckerberg noting that the social network is “pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have”.
Yahoo! could benefit from such a partnership as the computer codes which power search engines become more powerful as more people use them, thus working with Facebook could help strengthen its position.
The Telegraph also suggested the move would allow Yahoo! to ‘piggyback’ on the social network’s brand cachet to help it recruit top-tier computer programmers, a problem it has faced in recent years as many of its chief executives have come and swiftly gone.
In addition such a partnership could threaten Google’s domination over the world’s big technology companies. A Telegraph source at Yahoo! likened its position to that of a minority party in a hung parliament, with the power to act as kingmaker by choosing another party with which to align itself.
Microsoft could also be affected should the partnership go ahead as Yahoo! signed a deal in 2009 for its own Bing search engine to power all of Yahoo!’s search results to allow Yahoo! to focus on selling search advertising.
Yahoo! sources have claimed this has been problematic as Microsoft has not been able to attract the right “maths geeks” to mount a serious challenge to the likes of Google forcing Yahoo! to look as ways to get out of the 10-year deal.