Microsoft hopes it will complete the Bing-powered takeover of Yahoo's backend search later this year, according to a Microsoft executive speaking at an investor conference June 9, although complications could delay that transition until early 2011.
Those statements correspond with earlier blog postings by both companies' representatives. Microsoft and Yahoo likely hope that their 10-year search-and-advertising deal will allow them to more robustly challenge Google in the online space, where the latter continues to hold the lion's share of the search-engine market while expanding its reach in areas such as email.
Microsoft and Yahoo had previously announced that they hoped to have the major aspects of the deal, which includes porting Yahoo's U.S. advertisers and publishers onto Microsoft's AdCenter platform, in place by the end-year holidays 2010. Yahoo will take over worldwide sales-force duties for both companies' search advertisers.
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