Tech giants Yahoo and Microsoft have mutually agreed to extend re-negotiation deadline of the search deal between the two by 30 days.
The partnership deal, which was agreed in 2010 by Yahoo’s Carol Bartz and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, allowed Yahoo to use Microsoft Bing’s search technology as well as search-based advertising system.
The agreement allowed the companies to negotiate changes or to terminate the arrangement entirely after five years. Under the terms of the deal, the companies had 30 days to make changes following February 23.
According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Yahoo and Microsoft have mutually agreed to amend the terms of the search alliance agreement, extending the deadline to a 60-day period until late April to terminate the deal.
As part of the agreement, the search alliance would remain in effect for the next five years if there was no exercise of option to exit. Yahoo’s call for the extension could mean that the company may be planning to make an exit from the alliance.
“We value our partnership with Microsoft and continue discussions about plans for the future. We have nothing further to announce at this time,” Yahoo said in a statement.
Microsoft is yet to comment on the negotiations.
Microsoft is now such a floundering company, for many years now it has been totally lost without the input of Bill Gates. It’s quite a shame as they went from a basic startup company many years ago, developing basic for the MSX range of computers, MS-DOS for the IBM PC’s and later possibly one of the most used operating systems, Windows, but now these days have gone, people are moving on to new operating sytems and newer companies like Google and Apple and Microsoft are really struggling to keep up. Apple nearly went the same way, a totally lost and floundering company until Steve Jobs came back and give it an extra boost. Microsoft really does need to re-invent itself more now though and start to concentrate rather than developing operating systems, develop software to run on various operating systems. Other companies have diversified this way in the past and done really well – Sega went from making games consoles when it realised it couldn’t compete with Nintendo and Sony and started making games for the two rival consoles – remember the shock of Sonic on the Nintendo, and Acorn used to make computers like the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron, and now instead of making the entire computers, they make the chips that go into most smartphone and tablets under the name of ARM (Acorn RISC Machine)