Microhoo: New Search equation has India implications

30th July 2009
Microhoo: New Search equation has India implications

INDIATECHONLINE COMMENT:
Microsoft’s new arrangement with Yahoo will have its ripples in India – where both players have considerable development muscle.
 
The deal announced this week, will see Yahoo leverage Microsoft’s recently refurbished seach engine Bing for its own search offerings; while using its marketing strengths to sell search-driven advertisements for the websites of both players.
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While the addition of Microsoft/Bing with Yahoo may still not challenge the search leader Google ( together they would represent just below 30 percent of all Internet searches, to Google’s 65 percent), the coming together has interesting implications for India: 
 
Microsoft’s Hyderabad –based India Development Centre is its largest R&D resource outside the US and its engineers contributed some of the instant answer features  of Bing, including cricket and flight status; tennis, golf and racing   for Indian and US markets ( Deccan Chronicle July 15 story   http://www.deccanchronicle.com/business/india-adds-instant-answers-bing-453  )
 
Yahoo’s Bangalore based teams have played key roles in the rollout of its mobile search offerings and are known to have helped craft some of  its flagship  search monetization tools  
 
Google, too has leveraged its India-based development strengths across the full gamut of its own search technology. 
 

So regardless of who wins and who loses share in the global search business, after this week’s   new combo, it is fairly certain, that India wins …. Her talents will continue to drive the cutting edge technologies of all three players for some time to come -- Anand Parthasarathy/ Bangalore. July 30 2009