It looks like Microsoft and Yahoo have finally become one, at least with web searching. The U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have signed off on the partnership Thursday which marks the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

What does this mean for us?

Well for starters this isn’t a huge deal for the average internet user. You see, a lot of the deal is happening invisibly. Microsoft and Yahoo! are simply joining forces with their search engines to make one big engine. You probably won’t even notice anything different. When you visit Yahoo.com to search for something, you will be using Microsoft’s Bing now. That’s pretty much it.

What does this mean for Google?

My guess is not much, but it’s a good start. It’s obvious that Microsoft and Yahoo merged search engines to tackle the Big Bad Google, but it’s too early to say exactly how it will impact the most visited website in the world.

The actual merge was approved, but it hasn’t taken affect on the internet just yet. Should take about a year for the search portion to be finalized.