The search deal involving Yahoo! and Microsoft will be completed in the early part of 2010, it has been revealed.
Having originally planned to announce an arrangement by October 27th 2009, the two firms have mutually agreed to extend the deadline to an unspecified date in the new year.
Yahoo! states that "the complex nature of the transaction" means a number of details need to be finalised.
"The parties are working diligently on finalising the agreements, have made good progress to date and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible," it adds.
Meanwhile, a separate statement from the group said both companies are "optimistic" about a deal being completed early in 2010.
Once the two organisations have come to an agreement, it is hoped their combined search engine technology can challenge Google's dominance in the field.
Digital analyst comScore recently revealed that Google sites accounted for 64.9 per cent of all searches conducted in the US in September, while Yahoo! and Microsoft sites had 18.8 per cent and 9.4 per cent of the market share respectively.
