It's official!

From our friend Ryan Deiss...
http://drivingtraffic.com/microsoft-and-yahoo-challenge-google/

Microsoft announced today that they have struck a deal to power Yahoo’s search, while at the same time Yahoo will be powering paid ads on Bing.com (Microsoft’s new search platform…formerly known as MSN).

You can get all the details here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-29release.mspx

…and here:

http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/Default.aspx

So why is this good news for marketers?

It’s simple. With Yahoo and Microsoft now a team, Google finally has some competition in the search market. This means:

1. Ad costs may go down, and…
2. Google may stop being such enormous jerks to their advertisers (which could mean less “Google Slaps”)

Obviously this is just my speculation, and the deal doesn’t go final until 2010 so don’t expect anything to change overnight, but competition is (almost) always a good thing for consumers, so for now, at least, I’m chearing this deal.