I'm a bit concerned what it will mean when Yahoo's engine is shutdown and only Bing's is left. Presumably it will cause a massive reshuffling of web traffic, because Bing's crawler and ranking algorithms are different.
There will probably be some major winners and losers as a result.
The tech press hasn't done a very good job of being clear about the details of the deal, which is unfortunate, since it's left many people with an inaccurate picture of what it entails.
A modern search "engine" is really many, many engines. There are countless backend systems layered on top of and alongside the core algorithmic search system that most people think of when they think of a search engine (and that Microsoft will soon be running for Yahoo! as part of this deal). None of those other systems are going away as a result of this deal, nor is Yahoo! Search itself going away.
Yahoo! isn't just going to flip a switch and start using Bing's algorithmic search. As part of the deal, Microsoft has licensed the core algo search technology that currently powers Yahoo! Search, so you're likely to see more of a melding of the two.
Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! Search (on the frontend, not the backend), but I speak for myself, not for Yahoo!.
Interesting. Whenever I hear discussions of these sorts of things they're made out as basically swapping plugins -- Site X will now use Site Y's search algorithms, index, etc. instead of their own. If it truly is a melding that could result in better search results in aggregate, I like the idea that someone (or someones) could actually compete with Google.
Thanks for replying. Can you tell me if what I was worried about is likely to happen? Will there be a big reshuffling of web traffic due to Bing returning results that differ from Yahoo's current results?
Your question presupposes that the search results from a given search engine tend to remain static over time, but they're actually in constant flux. All the major search engines make frequent tweaks (sometimes small, sometimes large) to their ranking algorithms, and indexes are updated endlessly around the clock with new and changing content.
There will probably be some major winners and losers as a result.