AOL To take Over Microsoft's Display Ads
Microsoft is offloading some of its services and plans to will hand over its display advertising business to AOL and sell some map-generating technology to ride-hailing app company Uber. The moves mean Microsoft will focus on its growing search advertising business based on its Bing search engine, and displaying maps on its Windows devices rather than generating the maps themselves.
Microsoft said that some of its employees would be transfered to AOL and that it was not making any layoffs.
"Today’s news is evidence of Microsoft’s increased focus on our strengths: in this case, search and search advertising and building great content and consumer services," said Microsoft in a statement.
Under a 10-year deal struck with verizon's AO will sell display ads on MSN, Outlook.com, Xbox, Skype and in some apps in major countries. As part of the deal, Bing will become the search engine behind web searches on AOL starting next year.
Separately, Microsoft said today that it’s selling part of the Bing maps unit to car-booking company Uber Technologies. As part of that deal, Uber will offer jobs to about 100 Microsoft employees.
Microsoft and Uber did not disclose financial terms of their deal.