Microsoft and Yahoo today announced they had reached a deal to form a search and advertising partnership. Under the partnership, Microsoft’s Bing search engine will power Yahoo Search and Microsoft’s AdCenter search advertising service will provide search ads to Yahoo Search for 10 years. The deal increases the reach of Microsoft search engine and search advertising service. Nielsen Online reported that in May Microsoft had 9.4 percent of U.S. searches and Yahoo had 17.2 percent of searches. While larger, the combined percentage is only 26.6 which is not even half of Google’s 63.2 percentage for the month. The companies indicated that they are “hopeful” that the deal will close, after possible regulatory review, in early 2010. Officials from the companies told CNET News that they expect “integrating Bing’s results into Yahoo in the U.S. will take several months” and that moving to AdCenter “could take a year”. The companies expect that full integration would occur within 24 months. The deal did not include a merger of the two companies display advertising businesses. The deal follows on an of talks about some type of agreement between the two companies that began with a hostile takeover offer by Microsoft early last year.