Tomorrow’s Yahoo! and google
Taking into account that both Google and Yahoo! Now they look more like new age technological avatars instead of mere search engines, what makes them different? There is an obvious difference in respective business planning as it should be, but at least one big difference to a layman lies in how they let it be known where they stand.
Both are undoubtedly working on pioneering initiatives, but while Yahoo! apparently talking about it, Google prefers to play its cards close to the chest until the last moment before revealing it. Second, from the standpoint of the search industry, there is a marked variation in strategic planning from one to the other.
If you look closely, it will be apparent that for a while now, search engines are no longer limited to providing search results, although that is still the mainstay. Armed with the treasure chest of user search behavior across vast geographic areas curated over more than a decade, it seems unsurprising that for the major search engines the priority (to maintain sustainable growth) is increasingly shifting towards incorporating innovative technology to power to make web life more informative and useful.
Both Google and Yahoo! they have redoubled their efforts to redefine the priorities of people on the web, and thus move away from the effect of only providing search results. The underlying assumption seems to be that there are a lot of them doing that, so there isn’t much else to be gained.
Seen from this perspective, it is really interesting to study how the 2 giants are solving it for themselves. Let us take a look.
Yahoo!
Betting on the massive search for data and its evolution over time, Yahoo! Research [http://research.yahoo.com/about/] it has set out to uncover significant information that may be useful in charting the future course of growth. in their own words [http://research.yahoo.com/about/]:
“Yahoo! manages many of the largest and richest data repositories in the world, and our researchers extract information from these giant collections, individually and collectively.”
The fact that data mining can help in strategizing overall goals and planning growth for the future demonstrates Yahoo!’s research plans. Therefore, it is consistent that the basic research of Yahoo! focus on 3 main fields, viz. [http://research.yahoo.com/research/data_analytics.shtml]foundations [http://research.yahoo.com/research/foundations.shtml] and search [http://research.yahoo.com/research/search.shtml].
The game of technology
An interesting branch of Yahoo! is to partner with O’Reilly Media to design a “fantasy design marketplace”, called The Tech Buzz Game. [http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/index.html]’ began in May of last year. The program lends you an imaginary haul of $10,000 and prompts you to bid for or against ‘fantasy stocks’ representing companies involved in products or technologies that netizens believe will become popular (or disappear) in the future. And while it does, the popularity or ‘buzz’ of a technology or concept is constantly calculated in the background by Yahoo! search frequency.
From Yahoo! already possessing a lot of elaborate search behavior, the tech game and others of its ilk are pitched as novel ideas that should provide vital inputs to enable Yahoo! made technological advances in the coming days. So, in the case of Yahoo!, the strategy appears to be the traditional ‘design for market’ route.
google’s answer
Unlike the sophisticated Yahoo! Intended to reveal the behavior patterns of surfers, until now Google has let its products do the talking quietly. With a host of innovative products released in quick succession, Google has taken everyone by storm. People are amazed not only by the huge number of them, but also by the novelty and ease of use of the products. Just check out everything Google offers [http://www.google.com/options/]and you will surely be impressed.
Recent releases from Google, like Gmail Chat
[http://mail.google.com/mail/help/chat.html] – or, for that matter, crafty tools and features like Google Base [http://base.google.com/]google local [http://local.google.com/]Browse by name [http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=9267&hl=en] – are unequivocally geared towards extending Google’s reach far and wide. The newest pen to add to the already impressive list is Google Page Creator. [http://pages.google.com/]it is said to be still in the initial testing phase.
Looking at Google, one is inclined to conclude that as it works on strategies for the future like Yahoo!, Google evidently thinks it’s best to shore up as many ‘followers’ as possible. The idea seems to be ‘do whatever, but never lose sight of the core capability’.
Google’s seriousness about bolstering its main moneymaker, AdWords, can be gauged when it started offering Urchin for free. Urchin, renamed Google Analytics [http://www.google.com/analytics/], is a classy web analytics service comparable to the best in the industry. Today, the popularity of AdWords is staggering, as is the related revenue stream for Google.
For the record, Google Analytics is also available for free for all web pages, even without an AdWords account, subject to a maximum of 5 million page views per month. This limit does not apply to “active” AdWords accounts. Getting your own Google Analytics is difficult as one has to wait in a queue and this can take several months.
So what?
The jury is still out on who will eventually carry the torch for the most innovations in search. Between the two, Google seems to be more successful in reading market needs correctly. As a result, it has achieved an unquestionable advantage (as of now) over its main rival in both organic and ppc searches. Not surprising, admits Yahoo! CFO Susan Decker [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/256748_yahoo24.html] as much.
Tomorrow’s web users will not only communicate live on the net, but will also be looking for advanced technology to live an easy life off the net. The web will become ubiquitous in everything we do, and a large part of web activity, in addition to fun, entertainment and electronic conversations, will continue to search for the right information at the right time. It is here where Google and Yahoo! It will continue to be relevant, although the type of service and its delivery can be expected to undergo many changes.
As stated before, both Yahoo! and Google can boast of having a gigantic database of how people use them when searching for information. Putting them to use for real benefits for a large crowd of Internet users is the main challenge. At the moment, Google is considered to be far ahead. What happens in the future, only time will tell.