It’s been a long time coming—since July of 2009—but Microsoft and Yahoo have finally finalized the details of their long-term search partnership. Curiously, the companies are not sharing many of those details, although the broad strokes of the agreement have been public for many months. By partnering up, Microsoft hopes to increase its share of the Internet search market versus Google; Yahoo, in turn, gets an infusion of cold hard cash to bolster its bottom line via a revenue sharing agreement for traffic generated from Yahoo’s sites and services.
“Microsoft and Yahoo believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation,” the companies said in a joint statement. “Yahoo and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”
The deal must now get regulatory approval in both the United States and the European Union; although no major hurdles are expected, the approvals won’t come until sometime in 2010.
The Microsoft-Yahoo partnership has a period of 10 years—an eternity in Internet time. Under the deal, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will become the default search provider for all Yahoo sites. Although each company will continue to operate its own display advertising business, Yahoo will handle both companies’ premium search advertisers and Microsoft’s AdCenter program will handle self-service advertising for both companies. Yahoo will also earn money from a revenue sharing deal with Microsoft for traffic generated from Yahoo’s network of sites and services. However, rather than ceding all search functionality to Bing, Yahoo will continue to “own” the search experience on its own sites, and promises to continue innovating in the field of Internet search, even though the back end will be Microsoft technology.
At the time the deal was initially announced, Yahoo estimated the agreement would bring Yahoo about $500 million a year in revenue, in addition to saving the company some $200 million a year in costs and operating expenses.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.