Microsoft to hire 400 Yahoo! employees

Software giant Microsoft will hire 400 employees of internet major Yahoo! as part of their planned partnership in internet search and advertising space.

"Microsoft will hire not less than 400 Yahoo! employees (the 'transferred employees') and will offer the Transferred Employees market competitive compensation packages," Yahoo! said in a regulatory filing yesterday.

The internet major noted that both companies would mutually agree on a retention plan which would be taken care of by Microsoft, for the transferred employees.

Further, upon mutual agreement, Microsoft would use another 150 employees of Yahoo! to assist with providing the transition services, the filing said.

Microsoft and Yahoo! last month announced a partnership which will bring the companies together in the search arena and sales activities related to search advertising.

Both companies would enter into a 10-year agreement for the proposed partnership and Yahoo! would be paid 88 per cent of the search advertising revenues generated in the first five years of the alliance.

According to the filing, Microsoft would pay Yahoo! an amount of $50 million on an annual basis, during the first three years of the search agreement.

"Yahoo! may use these payments to partially cover transition and implementation costs not otherwise covered under the search agreement," it added.

As part of the deal, Microsoft would acquire an exclusive 10-year licence to Yahoo!'s core search technologies. This would also allow the software giant to integrate Yahoo!'s search technologies into its existing platforms including Bing, Microsoft's newly launched search engine.

The alliance would challenge the dominance of rival Google in the internet search space.