When Google’s search engine and Bing’s search analytics were both acquired in 2013, it set off a wave of mergers and acquisitions.
Now that Microsoft and Yahoo are working together to build a new business model for its internet-facing business, some say the new partners are set to help solve some of the thorny questions that have kept search engines apart.
Read moreMicrosoft’s search partner for the Xbox is Bing and Google’s partnership with Yahoo.
Google, which bought Bing in January, has said it will build its own search engine in 2018.
But the relationship between Bing and Microsoft has remained tense, with Bing’s executive chairman, Marissa Mayer, publicly saying Microsoft should be “more focused” on its search business.
Microsoft has also announced it will start to partner with other companies, including Uber, Lyft and Airbnb.
“I think Bing is a good partner for Yahoo,” said Paul Lee, the former Microsoft president and chief operating officer who now heads up a Yahoo-led venture capital firm called T-Mobile Ventures.
Lee said Bing’s technology is already used by other companies and that it could be used by Yahoo to build an online advertising platform that could compete with Google.
“There is a great synergy between Bing’s strengths and the capabilities of Yahoo’s search technology, so I think it’s a win-win situation,” Lee said.
“Yahoo has a very large audience, it’s the number one search engine on the planet.
Bing is in the minority, so they’re going to need to work together.”
Bing and Google have a history of partnering on things, like Bing search ads for Amazon, and Google is working on a new ad-tracking technology that would allow it to track how many people are using the service and what they are looking for.
But Google also has an important relationship with Microsoft, with Microsoft making a billion dollars in advertising revenue each month from the Bing search engine.
Microsoft bought Bing for $1.05 billion in 2013.
Google made a billion in advertising dollars from Bing in the same year.
“We’re looking to grow and expand the partnership and be a more proactive partner for Bing,” said Dan Krizhevski, the general counsel for the Washington-based consumer group Public Knowledge.
“We’ve been a big fan of Google, and they have the best search engine out there, so it’s very important that they partner with Bing.”
Bengals’ new partnership with Bing could make the company a bigger player in the search market, said David Hylton, the head of the Microsoft Search Analytics team, who is part of Microsoft’s search team.
Bing will help Microsoft with its search efforts, but Bing could also help the company improve its Bing search performance, he said.
While Bing has built its own technology for many years, it has been a partner in the past with a number of companies that have used the technology.
Google has used Bing for many of its search queries, but the companies often didn’t have the same relationships with Bing that Microsoft has.
“It’s a big challenge for Microsoft to build up a large relationship with Bing because they are a very different kind of company,” Hylman said.