While recent rumors suggested Yahoo might not renew its search partnership with Microsoft, both companies are announcing today that the deal will continue with some changes. The alterations to the original 2009 deal give Yahoo some flexibility to alter its search results on any platform as the partnership is now non-exclusive for desktop and mobile. It appears that Yahoo wants to customize its search experience in future, but it’s still going to rely on some of Microsoft’s Bing technology to help it do so. "Yahoo will continue to serve Bing ads and search results for a majority of its desktop search traffic," says a company spokesperson.

Some changes to give Yahoo more flexibility

Yahoo and Microsoft are also tweaking the way ads are delivered and managed. Microsoft will own the ads delivered from its own Bing Ads platform, while Yahoo will continue with its own Gemini ads platform. Both companies are planning to transition their sales responsibilities over the summer. In reality, this allows Yahoo to own and manage the its own ads platform and Microsoft to serve Bing ads alongside its search results on Yahoo.

"Over the past few months, Satya [Microsoft CEO] and I have worked closely together to establish a revised search agreement that allows us to enhance our user experience and innovate more in our search business," says Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. "This renewed agreement opens up significant opportunities in our partnership that I’m very excited to explore."