Now that the dust has settled after the big announcement about Yahoo and Bing joining hands, I wonder if the two brands will be able to take on Google and change the competitive landscape of "Search" just a little bit.

Yahoo had announced that it had begun transitioning Bing results into Yahoo results – a product of the Search Alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo search experiences are now powered by the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada (English), with more markets to come. The speed in which this was completed is a testament to the great work and partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft employees.
 
To minimize the effect of the merge on marketing dollars, Yahoo will be displaying mainly organic results from Bing. Currently Yahoo only delivers English-language searches via Bing but that’ll change over time. Yahoo searches will switch over to Bing in other countries throughout 2011 and 2012.

The big question in all of our minds is whether the competitive landscape will change. I mean, come on, Google is still the big dog and it still dominates the search market with almost 66 percent usage share.

 By combining Yahoo’s and Bing's search shares, however, Microsoft will get control of more advertising dollars. Maybe this will allow them to invest in more better search technologies?