Announced earlier today on Adage.com, despite the potential Microsoft Bing and Yahoo merger, Yahoo is taking a defensive approach by continuing to compete with both Microsoft Bing and Google. Keeping in mind that the merger of Microsoft Bing and Yahoo would take between 18 and 24 months to complete and may or may not happen, in my opinion, Yahoo’s making the right move by continuing to invest huge sums of money to make their search engine better and competitive with Microsoft Bing and Google.

I am very excited for the new features that Yahoo speaks of implementing into their search engine. Adage.com reports they will be improving their search engine with:

Video ads in search. Yahoo is expanding an existing program and offering video on a cost-per-click basis to a select group (100 to 150) of large advertisers.
More control, lower keyword prices. In a new initiative, search advertisers will be able to buy just Yahoo sites, or the entire network, and the company will lower some minimum keyword prices.
Portable campaigns. The company is developing a system to allow advertisers to easily export Yahoo search campaigns to other search engines such as Google. Google offers this with its AdWords Editor, but advertisers have long complained that it is difficult to use and impractical for large campaigns.
Customized search. Yahoo is enhancing its “build your own search” service, allowing developers to customize search on their sites and share revenue, as Google does today.
Customized results. The company is renovating search results to better reflect the personal interests of users — along the lines of its new “It’s Y!ou” slogan — and improve the matching of keyword ads to longer queries.

With all of the features of Microsoft Bing, and the new and upcoming features of Yahoo, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo combined will be like “search heaven”. It will have all of the features a user could ask for. I have always been a Google user. Although I like and commonly use some of the features Microsoft Bing has to offer, I have always found that Google’s simplicity beats out the other search engines. But once this merger happens, if it does, well, chances are I will enter search heaven and begin using the Microsoft Bing/Yahoo (combined) search engine more and more often.

I’d like to get your comments on this though. Does the simplicity of Google beat out these other two search engines? Are Yahoo’s new features going to attract new users? Submit your comments below!