This week Microsoft and Yahoo’s announced that they received “unrestricted” clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission to proceed with their proposed search deal.

This joins the second and third most popular search engines on the web and will have dramatic effects on the search market. The announcement sets the end of the year as a target for the transition.

Steve Balmer said,

“Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone. I believe that together, Microsoft andYahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”

Good luck Steve, you’re  going to need as Google currently has more than 65% market share.