Microsoft and Yahoo signed a 10 year deal this week which has many people asking, how will the search engine landscape change over the duration of their agreement.

10 years is an extremely long time in Internet years.  10 years ago, Google was in its infancy and the PPC game was just taking shape with GoTo.com (which eventually became Overture, which eventually was bought by Yahoo).

We all know that Microsoft is notoriously late to the game when it comes to the Internet.  We also know that, with their abundant resources, they can certainly make an impact once they do decide to start playing.  We saw that first hand with Netscape and Internet Explorer in 1995 (or so).  Albeit, Google is probably better positioned for a full frontal attack than Netscape was.

I think that the immediate opportunity for Microsoft/Yahoo will be on the paid search side of the equation.  They have been working on this deal for quite some time now.

Who dominates the natural search side in the next 10 years will be the company that best embraces the convergence of social media and search.  Search relevancy will be more and more determined by users' preferences and the search engine's ability to personalize search results to an individual's location, interests, values etc.

What do you think of the Microsoft & Yahoo deal? 

How will this change the search engine landscape over the next 10 years?