MicroHoo: Technology's Newest Couple Says "I Do"

After 18 long months of on-again, off-again online business romance, Microsoft and Yahoo have final sealed the deal. The two announced today they will team up in an effort to chip away at Google's dominating lead in the search engine marketplace.

By joining forces, the new MicroHoo (tech's version of TomKat) partnership is set to complement each other's money-making strengths and weaknesses. Microsoft Bing will support the search engine part of the relationship and will provide the "power" behind Yahoo's search. That leaves Yahoo to focus on media, marketing services, and their brand charisma to sell premium search advertising for both companies, using Microsoft's AdCenter system.

Currently, Google makes up 65 percent of search engine market share, while the newly formed MicroHoo partnership nets a combined 30 percent market share. With a signed ten-year partnership agreement set to begin in 2010, the two companies are certainly primed to begin raising the needle for tomorrow's search engine market share. That's if Google doesn't stop them first.