This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Yahoo do this kind of bundling; their deal with BT to offer BT-Yahoo branded broadband in the UK was another of this kind of business tactic.
This time, however, its Yahoo and Symantec. Apparently, in a move trying to battle with Google and Microsoft, Yahoo will promote discounted Symantec security software and Symantec will provide virus protection in Yahoo’s Toolbar.

Both companies need this partnership – Yahoo shares recently fell by a large margin and they need to try and gain some ground against Google in the search engine war. I guess their idea is that they will entice users into using their search engine by offering them discounts on ‘essential software’.

Symantec are looking increasingly threatened by Microsoft, as they plan in Vista to bundle their own free anti-spyware solution Windows Defender, and have launched a complete security solution including anti-virus with their Windows Live OneCare service. However, Symantec are still by far the leader in Windows security products at the moment. They are attracting competition from significantly smaller security vendors, such as F-Secure, and these smaller companies are beginning to gain a bit of ground. Also, the emerging market of anti-spyware products wasn’t immediately snapped up by the big companies, and smaller firms like Webroot have responded by taking market share in this area.

It will be interesting to watch this move and see how far this partnership goes, and how far Yahoo and Symantec are willing to go in terms of price reduction to secure more Yahoo searches and more Symantec users.