Yahoo's New Search Plans: Out Bing Bing - John Battelle's Searchblog
Overall and perhaps best indicated by the stock movement, nobody is seeing too much value for Yahoo in the deal with Microsoft. This is not surprising considering the lack of upfront 'boatloads of cash' means that there is no alternative to an uncertain future. On the more positive side, Carol Bartz has made a tough call on what not to focus on, and been clearer on what she wants to focus on. There is good sense in getting out of a resource intensive process because more and more is having to be scraped, and more often to keep relevant for the pace at which today's web users search.
There's still more decisions to be made but Yahoo needed some of this leadership. Yahoo's success rests on four things
1) In the first 10 years, they do indeed innovate the consumer experience and grow their own search users such that they remain too important for Microsoft
2) Microsoft gets up to speed outside of the US. Most commentary has been very US focused, but what happens to Yahoo's leading positions in Asia? What do the two of them do to get scale in Europe?
3) Yahoo invests aggressively in its own products behind a coherent strategy, and continues to be a top 5 global internet channel. The acquisition of maktoob is a clear nod towards taking this seriously.
4) Yahoo builds a coherent strategy in display advertising and executes better than Google, Microsoft or other advertising players.
Yahoo might not need to even succeed in all 4, and it may well be impossible, which is where further decision making comes in.
In the meantime, the more important social point will be the impact of putting the indexing of the web into the hands of two rather than three players. I am not sure at this time that I see a problem with this, but that may be a naive belief that google and microsoft will keep it honest and there are no other players currently.
Overall and perhaps best indicated by the stock movement, nobody is seeing too much value for Yahoo in the deal with Microsoft. This is not surprising considering the lack of upfront 'boatloads of cash' means that there is no alternative to an uncertain future. On the more positive side, Carol Bartz has made a tough call on what not to focus on, and been clearer on what she wants to focus on. There is good sense in getting out of a resource intensive process because more and more is having to be scraped, and more often to keep relevant for the pace at which today's web users search.
There's still more decisions to be made but Yahoo needed some of this leadership. Yahoo's success rests on four things
1) In the first 10 years, they do indeed innovate the consumer experience and grow their own search users such that they remain too important for Microsoft
2) Microsoft gets up to speed outside of the US. Most commentary has been very US focused, but what happens to Yahoo's leading positions in Asia? What do the two of them do to get scale in Europe?
3) Yahoo invests aggressively in its own products behind a coherent strategy, and continues to be a top 5 global internet channel. The acquisition of maktoob is a clear nod towards taking this seriously.
4) Yahoo builds a coherent strategy in display advertising and executes better than Google, Microsoft or other advertising players.
Yahoo might not need to even succeed in all 4, and it may well be impossible, which is where further decision making comes in.
In the meantime, the more important social point will be the impact of putting the indexing of the web into the hands of two rather than three players. I am not sure at this time that I see a problem with this, but that may be a naive belief that google and microsoft will keep it honest and there are no other players currently.
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