Darren O'Neill
Software Architect
- Loves: Liverpool FC, Gaming, Films
- Hates: Go karting, People who say "Interweb", Onions
- Inspired by:
- Hong Kong
- Shigeru Miyamoto
- Christopher Lee
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Yahoo have missed the boat
It seems Microsoft have abandoned their attempt to purchase Yahoo... for the time being at least. I took an interest in this story as on the face of it, it seems a strange move from Microsoft. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have struggled to gain market share on Google for a variety of reasons but at a base level it is because they both have inferior search algorithms. Even working together their market share would be a distant second to Google.
It seems the directors at Yahoo were just playing hardball and had no intention of selling to Microsoft, no matter what the offer was. Their shareholders must be extremely annoyed as the price offered, for a fading brand, was extremely generous. Very few companies will be able to match it, and none probably will.
I am slightly disappointed that it didn't work out as a Microsoft-Yahoo success story could have provided a real alternative to Google. It is always good to have choice and it would have kept Google on their toes. It is not surprising that Google tried to sabotage the deal and tell everyone that would listen that it was bad for the industry - they were hardly going to rejoice from the rooftops.
With the dividing line between application and web service becoming more blurred by the day there will be many more Microsoft (king of the desktop) vs Google (king of the web) battles I'm sure.
Posted by Darren on 08 May 08, at 2:44 pm
4 comments on this post
I know someone who works on the search team at Yahoo in London. He mentioned that all the employees there know that the search facilities aren't ever going to match Google, and that as has been seen the last few years they are going to try and go even further down the portal route as opposed to search engine route. As someone who doesn't ever visit Yahoo, I'm not sure how successful this will be.
There are definitely a myriad of reasons as to why Google are number one now. I would say it was their simplicity of search that catapulted them into a position to offering the services you mention.
If you cast your mind back to the beginning when the web 'took off', Yahoo was massive; everybody used Yahoo. The problem was they cluttered up their website and forgot what they were about. Google came along, put a search field and a button on their homepage and were done with it. It wasn't long till they overtook Yahoo and they haven't looked back since.
I should have also said in the blog post that by no means do I want Microsoft to be in a dominant position when it comes to the web. They will seek to close it and fill it with their propriety software. However some competition to Google would be nice.
and to add to Yahoo's misery, Google has now overtaken them as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. So not only does Yahoo loose out on the search traffic, Google fueled by YouTube is becoming the #1 destination online.
I see your point, and I am sure that Microsoft + Yahoo would have been a stronger competitor to Google than Microsoft alone. I would argue though that it is not the superior search from Google that has made them such a success. In the earlier days Fast (http://www.fastsearch.com/) had better algorithms (Fast was purchased by Microsoft a couple of months ago, as they are one of the leading enterprise search engines).
Google Adwords + all the other marked tailored services is where Google really set themselves apart. Clever 'marketing' also ensured they became the default search engine. It is quite interesting to observe that Yahoo is most likely to adopt and use Google Adwords. In the end of the day, Adwords is where Google creates the vast majority of their revenue, so when the #1 competitor adopts the services we can see a successful business model at work.