Yahoo!7 has bucked a global alliance with Microsoft and Bing and struck an agreement with Google for search in Australia. That means both search results and ads served will be powered by Google.
In 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! signed a 10 year deal whereby Bing would power Yahoo! Search.
That agreement looked like including Australia up until earlier this year when the two failed to reach an agreement locally. Because it is a joint venture in Australia with Seven West Media, Yahoo!7 is not bound by the terms of the global search alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo.
Mi9 launched Bing Ads in July without Yahoo!7 onboard.
Both sides have blamed the other for failing to agree a deal, a situation that has not helped relations strained by intense local rivalry.
Yahoo!7 then approached Google. The two have now negotiated a deal. It is understood that the deal is not exclusive which means the two are free to work with other partners.
Yahoo!7 has played down the implications for staff as a result of the deal.
"Yahoo!7 can confirm that we are undertaking changes to evolve the Yahoo! Search Marketing business in Australia," said Amanda Millar, director of trade marketing and corporate affairs at Yahoo!7.
"In regards to the rollout of the Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance, unlike other markets globally, Microsoft made a decision to launch Bing in Australia without a managed migration of advertisers from the YSM Panama platform.
"As a result of this we have undertaken changes in our business which will see the majority of our search inventory transition to the Google Ad platform. This has led to a small number of redundancies representing less than 2% of our workforce.
"We will undertake a planned migration to the Google Ad platform over the next few weeks. We believe the decision by Microsoft to launch Bing without us is not in the best interest of the Australian search industry."
Google has over 90% of the local search market. Bing has around 5%.
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