Competition with 

Google
Microsoft’s continued OS dominance and its quick recovery in the “browser
wars” did not repeat itself in the search-engine market, where
Microsoft’s search engine, Live Search, trailed well behind those of Google
Inc., the new industry giant, and Yahoo! Inc., the durable Internet portal site.
Microsoft hoped to change the market dynamics with the release in 2009
of Bing, a “decision engine” designed to display more retrieved information in
search pages than was typical, thus enabling better-informed decisions
concerning what links to follow or, in some cases, displaying enough
information to satisfy the original query.

In 2008 Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, but this

proposal was rejected by Yahoo! However, negotiations between the
companies continued, and in 2009 an agreement was reached in which Yahoo!
would use Bing for its Web site and would handle premium advertisements for
Microsoft’s Web site. The deal was continued with some modifications (giving
more flexibility to Yahoo!) in 2015. Microsoft followed up the agreement with
Yahoo! by licensing search content from Wolfram Research, makers of the
Mathematica-powered WolframAlpha scientific search engine.

Competition with Google
Microsoft’s continued OS dominance and its quick recovery in the “browser
wars” did not repeat itself in the search-engine market, where
Microsoft’s search engine, Live Search, trailed well behind those of Google
Inc., the new industry giant, and Yahoo! Inc., the durable Internet portal site.
Microsoft hoped to change the market dynamics with the release in 2009
of Bing, a “decision engine” designed to display more retrieved information in
search pages than was typical, thus enabling better-informed decisions
concerning what links to follow or, in some cases, displaying enough
information to satisfy the original query.

In 2008 Microsoft had offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, but this

proposal was rejected by Yahoo! However, negotiations between the
companies continued, and in 2009 an agreement was reached in which Yahoo!
would use Bing for its Web site and would handle premium advertisements for
Microsoft’s Web site. The deal was continued with some modifications (giving
more flexibility to Yahoo!) in 2015. Microsoft followed up the agreement with
Yahoo! by licensing search content from Wolfram Research, makers of the
Mathematica-powered WolframAlpha scientific search engine.