It’s real. After 3 years of talks, negotiations, botched offers, exectutive replacements, rumors, alegations, and intrigue, Yahoo and Microsoft have finally settled on a deal. The link above is to the official press release that came out this morning. Here are the highlights:

“Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

“Advertisers will also benefit from scale and enjoy greater ease of use and efficiencies working with a single platform and sales team for premium advertisers.”

“The term of the agreement is 10 years.”

“Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing web search platforms”

Here’s the big one for search marketers: “Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites.” In other words, PPC marketers will be able to run ads on Bing and Yahoo through Microsoft AdCenter. This will certainly give marketers more of an incentive to use the platform as it will gain significant volume and cut down on management time.

“Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.”

“Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement.”

Full implementation is expected to take 2 years after regulatory approval. Hopefully the ad platform integration comes sooner, rather than later.