From BNET Technology Blog
Why the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Won't Help Bing
By Chris Dannen
Regulators have approved a deal that would allow Microsoft’s Bing search engine to power Yahoo search queries — but the assumption that this will actually help the companies combat Google might be all wrong.
Microsoft initially sought the Yahoo deal in July 2009 to funnel more queries into Bing, saying that increased search volume would allow Bing to deliver better results.
“Success in search requires both innovation and scale,” Ballmer said at the time. The Department of Justice’s antitrust division apparently buys that logic; in their decision to approve the deal on February 18th, regulators said that a bigger Bing query pool “should accelerate the automated learning of Microsoft’s search and paid search algorithms and enhance Microsoft’s ability to serve more relevant search results.” And that, the statement continues, means “a more viable alternative to Google.” (Google commands about 65% marketshare in the United States and nearly 90% in Europe. Bing’s is just over 11%.)
But is this assumption actually true?
Google Chief Economist and U.C. Berkeley [School of Information] professor Hal Varian, doesn’t believe so — and while he obviously has his biases, his argument is hard to dismiss. In an August 2009 interview with our sister site CNET, Varian explained that the size of the data pool is much less relevant than Microsoft would like to think....