Yahoo Japan has decided not to follow Yahoo Inc in moving to use Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine, and has signed a deal with Google instead.
Yahoo Japan used Google between 2001 and 2004, but then switched to using its own technology.
The US company, Yahoo Inc, announced plans a year ago to use Microsoft’s Bing search engine under a ten-year deal.
But Yahoo Japan is partially independent of Yahoo US, being partly owned by Japanese phone provider Softbank, and was never covered by the deal. It’s the most popular website in the country.
Indeed, with a 40 percent stake, Softbank is actually a bigger shareholder than Yahoo Inc, which has a little under 35 percent. And Yahoo Japan’s chairman is Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s president and chief executive.
On the company blog, vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan Daniel Alegre confirms the decision. He says that in Japan Google gives the fastest search results of any search engine and allows search results in Japanese.
Alegre says that Yahoo will also switch to using Google’s online advertising and distribution systems.
The deal will give Yahoo a very dominant position in the Japanese search market, as between them Yahoo and Google currently account for over 90 percent of all searches.
The changes are expected to take place over the next year.
