Yahoo renewed its partnership with Microsoft with a new modified Bing search deal, giving the latter more control on how search results will appear on both mobile devices and on desktop browsers.
The two tech giants said that the refreshed partnership is still an extension of their prior one in 2009. As the search markets shifted, analysts are now saying that the changes are just Yahoo and Microsoft's way of disentangling themselves from each other.
For instance, one of the large changes in their partnership states that Yahoo will now be able to show its own search results and ads for 49 percent of searches on mobile devices and desktops, while Microsoft will still be providing the majority of search results and ads until the so-called partnership ends five years from now, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo will definitely benefit from the changes in the search deal as its display ads business is estimated to make up for 5.2 percent of the web giant's total value. In Q4 of 2014, Yahoo's display ad revenues went down by more than five percent year-on-year, but the number of sold display ads on its properties rose by an impressive 17 percent.
Furthermore, Yahoo believes that their Social, Native and Mobile Video ads will help them make up for the decline as it increased by up to 100 percent year over year in the same quarter. As a result, the company is now aiming for mobile devices to grow revenue, according to Forbes.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is still pushing for a company overhaul, explicitly expressing her opposition against striking deals with AOL, one of the company's biggest rivals in online ads.