Yahoogle.co.jp!

Just as Microsoft and Yahoo! have joined forces in search, now Yahoo! Japan and Google have linked up too.

Yahoo!'s Japanese search engine will now use Google's technology rather than stick with fellow partner Microsoft and their Bing search engine as reported by NeoWin.

Yahoo! will also use Google's advertising system and pass search data back to Google.

Masahiro Inoue, Yahoo Japan President, said that after a thorough investigation they found that Microsoft's search technology was not properly suited for its needs. One of the reasons cited was the sub-part Japanese language search capabilities.

Yahoo Inc owns one third of Yahoo Japan and supports its decision to work with Google.  The deal, according to Yahoo Japan, won't violate any anti-trust regulations but Microsoft are not so happy.

In a statement the Redmond giant said "This agreement is even more anti-competitive than Google's deal with Yahoo in the United States and Canada that the Department of Justice found to be illegal. (The) deal would have locked up 90 percent of paid search advertising. This deal gives Google virtually 100 percent of all searches in Japan, both paid and unpaid. It means there will be no search competition in Japan and that Google will end up controlling all personal search information for all Japanese consumers and businesses."

Update: It appears as if the Japanese search results of Yahoo Japan are still provided by Google. When you compare results on yahoo.co.jp and google.co.jp you will notice that they are identical, at least for the results that we have tested.

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