Microsoft has officially partnered with AOL, making its search engine Bing the default for many of AOL’s websites. This cooperation agreement went into effect on September 19th.
Under the agreement, Bing Ads will be served on all of AOL’s search traffic sites, providing more exposure opportunities for advertisers. As Bing’s market share in US search engines steadily rises, now accounting for one-fifth, this cooperation with AOL will further expand its influence in the US. Industry analysts believe that with the cooperation of AOL and Yahoo, Bing will be able to account for one-third of the US PC web search share.
In addition, Microsoft’s previous cooperation agreement with Yahoo has also been updated. Microsoft will provide 51% of search results to Yahoo, instead of the previous 100%. The industry sees this adjustment as a further warming of relations between the two.
Major AOL websites including Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch will all use Bing as the default search engine. The cooperation agreement between Microsoft and AOL is for a period of 5 years and is expected to further enhance Bing’s status in US online search.
Experts say that the increasing frequency of search engine cooperation shows that major internet companies are re-adjusting their strategies to deal with the increasingly fierce competitive environment. It is expected that Microsoft’s relationships with Yahoo and AOL will continue to warm up in the future, forming a strong challenge to Google’s influence as a search engine.
