After a struggle for 18-months, Microsoft has finally persuaded Yahoo to surrender its search engine Yahoo search to Microsoft search engine Bing. As per the 10-year deal, Microsoft’s technology will power Yahoo’s search results, while Yahoo will handle ad-selling duties for both companies’ search sites.

“I am very enthusiastic,” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO said in an interview. “This is what I have basically been saying for the past 18 months: The world will be better served for consumers, advertisers and publishers, and there will be more competition for Google, if we can somehow figure out how to get Microsoft and Yahoo together in search.”

According to the research firm ComScore Inc, it is expected that Bing’s U.S. market share would instantly increase to 28 % which is triple that of current rate, whereas, Google holds 65% of U.S. searches. In the share market, the share of Yahoo Inc is dropped by 12 percent, while the share of Microsoft Corp is increased by 33 cents to $23.80.

IDC analyst Al Hilwa commented on the deal as “It’s ‘unfortunate’ that there will now be one fewer major search player because it will weaken the competitive landscape. In their quest to catch up with Google, both Yahoo and Microsoft were doing interesting and innovative things in search. That has been good for the industry”. And added that “With this deal, Microsoft is likely to feel less urgency to innovate and “move the needle”.

Google is looking at the deal as good one for net surfers, “There has traditionally been a lot of competition online, and our experience is that competition brings about great things for users,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said. “We’re interested to learn more about the deal.”

Bing, is it a Google killer? Certainly not. Actually, it is a much more competitive product than Live Search. Microsoft has rebranded and rebuilt its search engine ‘Kumo’ that was used internally at Microsoft. Bing offers easy navigation

The most significant change is that Bing organizes search results into categories. The explore pane at the left of search result displays categories like images, biography, facts, quotes, speeches, issues and videos related to the search string. Using the category links, users can drill into more specific results. Thereby it offers easy navigation to help users deal with information overload.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”