If there was any doubt that Yahoo Japan is independent of Yahoo in the U.S., lets dispel that: Yahoo Japan signed an agreement to use the Google search engine instead of Microsoft.
The deal, reported Monday by All Things Digital, it was confirmed that same day with a blog post Google Japan.
In the post, Daniel Alegre, vice president of Google’s Asia Pacific and Japan operations, said Yahoo Japan will use the Google search results and Google’s technology for the supply of the advertisements accompanying search. With these partnerships, the revenues from search ads is shared between the website and the company supplying the ads, in this case Yahoo, and Google Japan, respectively.
The deal is a coup for Microsoft, which has been working for years to not only match the usefulness of the Google search service leader in the market, but its scale. Yahoo plugged into the search engine of Microsoft Bing to provide search results, but it is clear that Microsoft could not convince Yahoo Japan to do the same in the primary market.
Yahoo is an investor in Yahoo Japan, but not the only – Softbank has a bigger share – which Yahoo Japan’s decisions, not necessarily aligned with that of Yahoo.