Live Blogging: Yahoo-Google Press Call

Yahoo is holding a press call right now regarding the Yahoo-Google deal announced this afternoon. Below are my live notes from the call. Refresh to see the latest. (the call has concluded).

Question: Do you think there are opps for partner sites to bypass Yahoo and go directly to Google.

Sue: It’s fair to say that our current publisher partners are included in this agreement. It’s our choice and their choice. The deal does not extend to new partners, we will continue to service them with Panama.

Question: What percentage of search queries do you expect to show Google ads on?

Sue: the $800 million opp in monetization in usa and canada is just for the queries where we believe there is monetization potential. We don’t know yet which individual queries and we hold full power over which queries to select.

Question: Why should we use Yahoo when we can buy from Google and get both?

Sue: The flexibility of this deal lets us optimize the best ads and we have the flexibility to optimize every single day to decide what inventory will be seen.

Jerry Yang – Clearly it is time to move on and we believe this deal with Google does just that. Our strategy at Yahoo is to capture the online advertising market. We view our open strategy as a key to this partnership’s success. We’ve entered into an non-exclusive agreement with Google to show Google advertising on our search results. The deal is 10 years along with 4 years initial and 2-3 year terms. It applies to U.S. and Canada only. This deal will increase revenue for Yahoo and enhance our position as a leader in advertising.

In the first 12 mos after implementation, we expect 250-450 million in incremental revenue and believe it 800 million in annual revenue where query monetization exists. It could come from search and/or non-search Yahoo products.  It will strengthen our competitive position in search and display. It also helps to extend our open extension and towards an open marketplace.

Sue Decker – We’re really excited about the deal we are announcing today. The deal is all about flexibility and let’s us do what we do best and enhances our options. It helps us to decide when we show Google ads and our Panama search advertising. We will be able to show Yahoo ads when we can offer more value. We get to select how much Google ads we run and we maintain control in how to show them on our sites. We improve our access to paid search. These added financial resources will help us to capitalize where we are best to compete, win and add value.

She talks about SearchMonkey and the other exciting announcements that have come out over the past few weeks. We will also see interoperability of Yahoo and Google’s IM clients.

Jerry – we’ve done something very important here. I believe this puts Yahoo on a faster track to creating shareholder value. This is just one step – we will continue to evaluate everything as we move forward. I believe we have the right assets, strategy and team to maximize stockholder value over time.