It appears that Yahoo and Microsoft are back to the table talking about a search partnership. The talks appear bereft of discussion for a takeover and the general news surrounding both companies appear to support the death of any takeover bid.
Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz, has joined ranks after the multiple takeover bids and doesn't appear to display any of the baggage from the multiple battles between the two companies in 2008. Microsoft appears to be moving on with their new search engine development (internal name Kumo).
What does it mean for the search world?
From our Search Engine Marketing perspective, we are happy to see Microsoft and Yahoo speaking in terms of combating Google's huge market share (multiple sources put them around 63%). Whether or not they can actually perform in this arena is questionable but we prefer they state that they will attempt to do so...
Until then, track your PPC numbers closely and diversify where you are able.