Yahoo has signed a partnership deal with software giant Oracle as it looks to increase its share of the search market. Under the deal, Yahoo is to be linked into new installations of Oracle’s popular programming language software, Java.
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, used the occasion of the company’s annual shareholder meeting on 24th June to make the announcement. A spokesperson for Yahoo has revealed that the deal is for three years, but the search engine is not saying what the financial terms of the partnership are.
The Yahoo-Oracle arrangement will see desktop computer users asked if they wish to make Yahoo their homepage and default search engine when they are installing Java software. The checkbox for doing both of these things is set to default, so Yahoo will get new users without the users having noticed.
In teaming up with Oracle, Yahoo is relying on past experience. Yahoo attracted a big increase in its share of search in late 2014 after Firefox replaced Google with it as its default search engine in its web browser. Some users eventually migrated back to Google, but figures published by comScore in May 2015 show that Yahoo enjoys a 12.7 per cent share of the desktop search market in the US. In the summer of 2014, that share was put at 9.8 per cent, an all-time low for Yahoo.
The Yahoo.com domain was set up in January 1995, with the web portal rolled out after that as the California-based company experienced rapid growth. Like other search engines, Yahoo has been overshadowed by the emergence of Google, but it has carried on with its own growth strategies. For instance, it acquired social media platform Tumblr in 2013. In 2014, it added video ad company BrightRoll to its roster of acquisitions in line with its pursuit of video as a key growth area. Those involved in video production are likely aware that the deal to acquire BrightRoll made Yahoo’s the biggest video ad platform in the US.
The latest partnership with Oracle makes perfect sense from Yahoo’s perspective because this is one technology company not content with what it has.
