July 29, 2009
Microsoft, Yahoo! Change the Search Landscape
Yahoo! and Microsoft today announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. For more information, check out Carol Bartz, our CEO’s post on Yodel here.
The Yahoo! Search Team
This is a very concerning move by Yahoo. Yahoo’s proprietary Search technology is incredibly underrated. I believe it is better than Google’s except in the area of science and technology searches. Even in science and technology searches, however, Yahoo Search is very good.
Yahoo has made this mistake before. The last time, Yahoo picked a small, non-threatening company to power all of Yahoo’s searches. You discarded your own search engine technology. You threw it in the trash. Soon that small company grew into the giant behemoth known as Google. Google betrayed Yahoo, forcing Yahoo to redevelop its own search engine from scratch to the cost of billions of dollars. That foolhardiness almost killed Yahoo off. That fundamental mistake by Yahoo was incredibly costly to shareholder value.
You need to learn from Yahoo’s own history. Let’s say Bing eventually takes a 40% market share in search. Why would anyone come to Yahoo to search, when they could just go to bing.com? They will go to the original source, and over time they will spend less time at Yahoo’s derivative pages. Microsoft is bound to betray Yahoo one day, just like Google did in the same scenario a few years ago. Microsoft would be crazy not to treat Yahoo as the weakling in this partnership from the beginning.
Quit being the nice guys, and start being the winners.
Yahoo needs to keep its own proprietary search engine alive. Give it one real URL like search.yahoo.com. Go ahead and make all the other search links on Yahoo link to Bing—for now. Eventually Microsoft will turn on Yahoo. When that happens, you must have Yahoo Search ready to take over on the spot and become your site’s main search engine again. You need to keep developing Yahoo’s own search engine, keep indexing the web, and keep it current. Sure you can cut costs, but it would be wisest to not cut them to the bone.
Keep Yahoo Search alive! Don’t become like Microsoft’s many other partners—stabbed in the back. Is Yahoo’s management even aware of what Microsoft has done over the years? Inhabiting the executive suite does not mean that you automatically make good decisions. Yahoo’s former managers learned that the hard way when they made the same mistake in “partnering” with Google several years ago.
Or, if you really are set on doing this foolishly, at least sell Yahoo Search to a small company like Cuil and that way the technology will be kept alive somewhere. Please make a public announcement of this so those of us who know the true greatness of Yahoo Search can switch over to wherever it goes.
The developers of the Yahoo Search engine have done an amazing job that does not get recognized by enough people around the Internet. To you guys and gals, I just want to say thank you for an amazing five years or so. It’s mind-blowing how good Yahoo Search has become in that time. I use Yahoo Search all the time because it is the most effective search engine. I recommend it to everyone. People are just currently stuck on Google. People can be slow and thick. As we know from history–things eventually change. Have patience.
In summary, I recommend that Yahoo keep its own Yahoo Search technology alive at search.yahoo.com. Your own homegrown technology is better at delivering relevant results than Google or Bing right now. Oftentimes in the tech industry, the best product does not get the biggest market share–at least not right away. This is one of those times.
There will be another day. When that opening arrives, be ready to take advantage of it. Keep Yahoo Search alive. Yahoo can be in a great position to take significant market share in the future. Be ready.
If that is your plan, and for now you are just using Microsoft to make more money–then great. Just keep your own technology alive and well and growing.
Good luck to Yahoo. You have been at the heart of the web from day one. For the sake of the Internet, I hope that continues.
Does this mean that, Bing will be used in the background for Yahoo! search results?
This means that Yahoo! and Microsoft are committed to depriving Yahoo!’s loyal visitors of a search technology they have trusted and relied upon for years — a technology that Yahoo! has simply failed to leverage to inflate page views the way Google has leveraged its own technology to inflate page views.
This is all about page views — increasing the number of times visitors see advertisements.
Apparently, they are hoping to draw in more advertisers, who will then bid up the costs of acquiring traffic from the combined advertising networks.
There is nothing consumer- business-friendly in this deal. It’s not going to change the balance of power in the search industry today.
It will probably reduce the amount of search referral traffic many sites receive from Yahoo!, as such sites perform better in Yahoo! than in Bing. On the other side, some sites will definitely see a rise in traffic as they perform better in Bing than in Yahoo!. But overall fewer sites will benefit from a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance than from both services remaining independent.
Yahoo! has bought search brands in the past: AllTheWeb, Goto/Overture, Altavista. All lost their market share and relevance and none really did anything to help Yahoo! stay on top.
Microsoft will gain more in the long run than Yahoo!, but Google will probably gain the most out of this sham of a deal.
The long-awaited news, we do not know in what form will yahoo and bing’s cooperation, I will continue to pay attention to
I wonder what will happen to Japanese Yahoo.
Apparently, Bing is the worst web search in terms of the search quality in Japan.
Japanese yahoo is dominant in Japan, so I think this can be very bad news for yahoo.co.jp if bing gets the controlling power to the decision.
what’s interface with the search engine, bing or yahoo? let’s wait together, google will be sad.
I think this is a very blog and strategic move for Yahoo as well as Microsoft. I think we will see a better stronger search engine after they combine technologies.
Yahoo! has bought search brands in the past: AllTheWeb, Goto/Overture, Altavista. All lost their market share and relevance and none really did anything to help Yahoo! stay on top.
http://www.rmutp.ac.th
Just as in life, the only sure thing is change.
Yahoo Change the not only Search Landscape but also all layout of site. i like this lay out and search land scap
I am very happy ( just like millions of other online users ) to see some change in the search landscape.
I am not trying to bash Google but they needed some good competition. I guess ultimately this deal is going to do good things for organic & paid search users as well and deliver a new experience.
Best luck
This deal will change the whole scenario, the two will give tough competition this time around.
thenks Yahoo Change the not only Search Landscape but also all layout of site
for me ,it is a good news.of course, include others.
It is good to hear that they are tied up in improving the services for all internet users. Getting innovation is the key to success and helping each other will really get the result that they are aiming for. Everybody in the business is not about rivalry or competition but by looking into how to improve the services so that all internet surfers out there will get benefit from it. I hope to hear about the tie up project of other search engines and internet web browsers as well.