Facebook and Yahoo! may be working together on a partnership that could upend the balance of power in the search engine business. Unconfirmed sources are telling the UK-based Telegraph that the companies are working on a deal that could seriously boost both of their profiles, and revenues.
As tantalizing as the deal may sounds (especially to Google-haters), there are still some big hurdles standing in its path.
For starters, Yahoo! signed a deal with Microsoft back in 2009 to utilize Bing to power their search results. The idea behind that move was that, once they were freed from search issues, Yahoo! could focus their efforts on sales.
According to published reports, Yahoo! officials aren’t happy with the way that deal has worked out and are looking for an exit.
Of course a Yahoo!/Facebook alliance is a bigger threat to Google than anything else. Both Yahoo! and Facebook bring some serious name brand credibility to anything they touch. And while Yahoo! has faded from search prominence, resurrecting their brand wouldn’t be all that tough if Facebook was involved.
While Yahoo! and Facebook have worked together in the past, so far there’s been no official comment on whether the two are really going to be working together on a search engine project.
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