Internet giants Yahoo and eBay are joining forces in an alliance that further defines the battle lines in an online brawl with rivals Google, Microsoft, and AOL, an Associated Press report said,
The report said that under the multiyear partnership, Yahoo and eBay would draw upon each other's strengths in online advertising, payments and communications so they could connect with even more Web surfers than they already did.
Shares of both companies jumped on the news, reflecting investor expectations that the deal would open even more moneymaking opportunities for two of the Internet's oldest and most successful businesses, the report said.
Yahoo operates the world's most trafficked Web site with 402 million unique users and ranks second in the lucrative search advertising market behind Google. It earned $1.9 billion on revenue of $5.3 billion last year, primarily through online ads.
eBay is the e-commerce leader, with nearly 200 million users of online auctions and another 73 million US account holders of its payment service PayPal. It earned $1.1 billion on revenue of $4.6 billion last year, mostly by taking a slice of the auction sales on its site.