Yahoo teams up with HP on search engine

[lgoss]

Yahoo Inc. said Thursday it has struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard Co. to plant its Internet search engine on millions of computers, the latest volley in a high-stakes battle with Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

The alliance unites two companies trying to catch up to the longtime leaders in their respective fields.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo ranks a distant second to Google in the lucrative search engine market while Palo Alto-based HP continues to trail Dell Inc. in personal computer sales despite recent gains.

The agreement requires HP to set up its desktop and notebook PCs in North America so Yahoo's search engine appears in the toolbar of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, the next version of the Web's most widely used browser. Yahoo is hoping that the tool bar will generate more search requests, providing a springboard for more ad revenue.

Mountain View-based Google and Round Rock, Texas-based Dell teamed up in a similar partnership announced four months ago.

Yahoo didn't disclose how much it will pay HP to spotlight its search engine - a detail that Google also left out in its Dell deal.

For PCs sold in Europe, HP will program the settings so Yahoo will be the automatic home page.

Microsoft is counting on the next version of its Windows operating system, due out early next year, to help it become a bigger factor in search engine advertising.

Google and Yahoo are hoping their respective deals with the world's top PC makers will help them counter any advantage that Microsoft may get from its updated operating system.

Although Yahoo remains the Web's most trafficked destination, the company hasn't been able to narrow Google's huge lead in Internet search - a factor that has crimped its earnings growth and battered its stock this year. The company already has warned its revenue for the current quarter will fall below Wall Street expectations.

Through August, Google held a 44 percent share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 29 percent and Microsoft at 12.5 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix.

On other fronts, Yahoo's long-standing position as the most-viewed Web site is being challenged by News Corp.'s MySpace.com, a social networking destination catering to teens and young adults. To counter the threat, Yahoo is rumored to be exploring a possible acquisition of Facebook.com, the second-ranked social networking site, for between $800 million and $1 billion.

HP, the world's largest technology company, is grappling with its own problems. Determined to plug a boardroom leak, HP authorized a probe that relied on a ruse to dig up the personal phone records of at least 18 people. The deception triggered a scandal that is now the subject of criminal and congressional investigations.

Before the companies announced their partnership, Yahoo's shares gained 68 cents Thursday to close at $25.33 on the Nasdaq Stock Market while HP's shares rose 58 cents to finish at $35.97 on the New York Stock Exchange.

[coolguy27]

Thanks for the info.. I think yahoo is buying links like Google is doing now...I had a rumor that MSN and Yahoo is merging but it doesn't happen so instead Yahoo and HP.

[2fk]

"For PCs sold in Europe, HP will program the settings so Yahoo will be the automatic home page."

Great move..this will be interesting..Acer and HP prefers to team up with yahoo rather than G...

[erikko]

a good move for Yahoo to market their search engine

[sryk]

Thats a good team up and surely a challenge for them. Beware google and microsoft.

[2fk]

Will microsoft still be interested to team up with yahoo..? anyway even that happened still G will dominate...

[will22]

Work in partnership is better..so why not team up?
Perfect..i think they will do good together.

[rypher21]

they are both reliable company...good for them!!! let's see what would be the outcome of this team up...

[avoir des goûts simples]

It's a great start for yahoo on 2009. That is the best thing that they can do for us. It's not that i don't like google . Of course i want something different and new. i believe Yahoo will get back on track next year... And if this happen do you still think google is still on top?

[ronwits]

This is it! I think this is one of the big changes yahoo is talking about.

[Jeremy80]

It's a decent move by Yahoo. This should improve their market share a tiny bit. It's more of the same by Yahoo though. They saw Google partner with Dell and Yahoo just had to play copy cat. Yahoo seems to have run out of ideas of their own.

As for HP, this is just them whoring themselves out. They have little choice because their products are of too low quality to be able to catch Dell. So they are just getting some money to make up for their low market share. I have given HP several chances and their hardware just always dies after a year or two. I have heard many other people complain of the same.

If Yahoo were able to acquire facebook that would be huge news. It is the one acquisition that would give them a fighting chance against Google....albeit a small chance.

[wige]

Lets not forget, this partnership happened over three years ago. Yahoo search has been "powered by" HP for quite some time now. I believe this predates Google's partnership with Dell (not to be confused with a sponsorship, which is what the Dell/Google portal represents) by quite a bit.

The Google/Dell deal is a bit different. There is a partnership, but it is not directly in terms of the core search engine. Although they have various agreements about Google software being included on Dell products and Dell manufactures the hardware for some Google products, Dell does not have a hand in Google's search algorithms.

The Yahoo partnership with hp is somewhat different. In that partnership, HP provided certain technologies that were incorporated into Yahoo's search capabilities. However, it is interesting to note that that partnership seems to have ended, with HP partnering with Microsoft Live Search in 2007.