Yahoo! Search supplemented with its directory of websites. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and data housing was done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001, the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later was powered by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would henceforth power Yahoo! Search. Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo! acquired their own search technology. In 2002, they bought Inktomi, a "behind the scenes" or OEM search engine provider,
Search engine privacy credit cards, they had a significant aversion to purchasing products from sites that did not offer the level of privacy they wanted, indicating that consumers value their privacy monetarily. Many individuals and scholars have recognized the ethical concerns regarding search engine privacy. The collection of user data by search engines can be viewed as a positive practice because it allows the search engine to personalize results. This implies that users would receive more relevant results, and be shown more relevant advertisements, when their data, such as past search queries, location information, and clicks, is used to create a profile for