Bing becomes the exclusive search provider of AOL

Jan 5, 2016 12:56 GMT  ·  By

Bing officially became the exclusive search provider of AOL on January 1, after Microsoft signed a partnership with the company last June.

Bing is thus powering the web, mobile, and tablet search features of AOL, and together with other similar collaborations, it should help Microsoft get closer to Google, which remains the dominant search engine worldwide.

Microsoft’s Bing is also the foundation of personal assistants such as Cortana and Siri, while also powering part of the search features available on Yahoo. But with AOL’s help, Bing should consolidate its position in the search industry, despite the fact that only few people are still using AOL these days.

“Partnering with Bing allows us to provide great search results and capabilities, across all screens, to our global audiences, as well as providing our brands valuable business insights and intelligence,” says Tim Lemmon, Head of AOL’s Search Business. “We’re looking forward to working together with the Bing team and bringing our audience to the Bing Network.”

Bing already powering 20 percent of the US searches

While Google continues to be the number one search engine across the world with more than 65 percent of the queries, Bing had a significant growth in 2015 and managed to surpass the 20 percent threshold for the very first time last year.

Basically, Bing is becoming the rival that Google has never had, although there’s clearly a lot to recover in terms of market share when it comes to this direct competitor.

And yet, this agreement reaffirms Microsoft’s commitment to invest in search, as the company was believed at some point to even be considering a potential sale of the division.

“Today’s announcement is testament to Microsoft’s ongoing focus on search and search advertising and our increasing scale that connects a marketer’s media buys to new publishers and audiences to help them achieve more impact for their business,” Microsoft itself explained.