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Yahoo Fights Back in Battle With Google
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Mar 28, 2005 02:48 AM
from the battle-of-the-goofy-names dept.
from the battle-of-the-goofy-names dept.
ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has a great analysis of how Yahoo is fighting back the Google assault. 'A handful of blog-evangelists, a couple of key buys - (Odd Post and Flickr) have turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes.' Yahoo's new initiatives like Yahoo 360 are even apprently making Yahoo Web 2.0 compliant."
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Provide Linux support (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yahoo already have Linux apps (Score:4, Informative)
http://messenger.yahoo.com/unix.php [yahoo.com]
X Window
GTK+ 1.2 or greater
OpenSSL 0.9.6 or greater
gdk-pixbuf 0.8 or greater
None of this require GNOME, only in the minds of the distro packagers.
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Money that's funny... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Money that's funny... (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't sound like they're giving everything away for free, if this quote from Wired, within TFA is accurate:
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Re:Money that's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Money that's funny... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yankee Fans Overshadowed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this analogy make sense to anyone? Are these the same Yankee fans that support the richest, most successful team in baseball history? (And I say that as a Red Sox fan.) Perhaps Mets fans would have been a better comparison -- or maybe there's another breed of "Yankee fans" out there that I'm missing entirely.
Sorry for the sports chat on
Re:Yankee Fans Overshadowed? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yankee Fans Overshadowed? (Score:3, Funny)
has been (Score:5, Insightful)
Im sorry but you can not really call Yahoo a has been , it may not be the #1 anymore , and i wouldnt use it as its pages are too busy , but a has been ?
The site has a massive turnover , and it still one of the most popular sites for many reasons , Mail , messenger , Geocities and searching etc.
Re:has been (Score:5, Informative)
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yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Interesting)
the only real exception to this has been their email system, which i'm no longer that flattered with...
sure it's great they have all sorts of neat features but who cares when they don't bother to update them as time goes by and users tastes change? google seems to actually do interesting things with their new projects. i am very curious how these new purchases are going to work out for yahoo or if they are just going to add to the rot.
Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:3, Insightful)
About the only thing GMail has changed in recent memory is that I can now invite 50 people where before I could invite 6.
Froogle hasn't changed in a long time. It still can't accurately pull prices out of many pages and coverage is spotty.
Google desktop search hasn't changed appreciably since it was released. Same
Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Gmail has changed quite a bit. Perhaps you just haven't noticed the changes, but it has added several functions (recently as in: this year). One such addition is the standard view which allows older browsers to access gmail.
Perhaps you consider the changes to be insignificant so there might as well be none. But for people who couldn't access gmail with the javascript interface, the change is actually quite good. There have also been other changes, but I can't find a list of recent changes.
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Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a matter of fact, GDS has had a new release which has:
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Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Customize this page" thingy is rather new.
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Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Informative)
They used to have a huge PC game patch database.
Yahoo got rid of it.
They used to have a magazine section with various authors writing about the gaming industry.
Yahoo got rid of it.
They used to have demos for practically every game that had one, even older games.
Yahoo got rid of it, and instead linked to their own service.
See, when Google buys companies, they keep them running, and might actually extend them. Yahoo buys companies to assimilate them into the collective. This is why I will continue to use Google.
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Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:5, Insightful)
-----
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org [uncyclopedia.org]:
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing [uncyclopedia.org] and Pong! the Movie [uncyclopedia.org]!
Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:4, Informative)
Just the other day I discovered I can view a traffic overlay on Yahoo Maps. Cool eh?
Carl
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Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:5, Interesting)
Web directory.
Web search.
Free web-based email.
Online organiser (calender and address book).
Free web hosting.
Online photo sharing.
News headlines and stories.
Movie times.
Maps.
Weather.
You can argue that Google has done nothing new. Their flagship product is nothing more than a better mousetrap - way to find stuff on the internet that's better than what came before. Yahoo was doing that a very, very long time ago - but mostly in the "digital directory" sense (creators of pages submit their page into the appropriate categories), not like Google's focused "digital index of everything" approach.
Put it this way: Could you still effectively use the internet if you could only access one company's web pages?
If I could only access *.yahoo.com I could basicly still do everything that I do on the internet. Check mail, read news (that's actually hosted on Yahoo's site), play online games, organise via online callender, watch music videos, participate in discussion groups. I could even look at porn - some discussion groups, refreshingly, have adult content. Yay for Yahoo treating users like grown-ups and allowing users to host porn on their networks!
If I could only access *.google.com - I'd be less pleased. Check mail, read news headlines (content is hosted elsewhere), read and post to internet newsgroups. But no porn unless it's ASCII because Google newsgroups ignore binary attachments. Dammit.
So anyway, my point is that Yahoo has more features and more stuff than Google. Google is slicker in some areas (like the clown-colored email client and the gee-wiz map javascript scrolling), but Yahoo is broader, more integrated and streamlined (try printing a Google map - it's messy). If you look at overall features - Yahoo kicks Google's ass. Yahoo's been bigger and badder than Google for a very long time. They're probably the most experienced company still on the internet when it comes to providing personalised content. And I've a feeling that Yahoo 360 is about to completely own Blogger.
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Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:4, Insightful)
Gmail is just a little bit more than a JS clown costume with alot of storage space and free pop 3 access. It's completely altered the way in which webmail can be accessed, with threading, effective searching, labels instead of directories (that is REALLY nice), and a whole slew of useability features that just aren't available in most web clients. Coupled with it's awesome storage space this makes Gmail close to being useable for those of us that get a TON of email.
Google Maps:
Wow! an intuitive interface... if I want to spot a location... I type it in, on one line, and hit enter. If I want directions I click the link and there are two one line bars with an arrow that tells me which way the directions are going... switch the path? sure... it's simple. Not only that... but hell, it's the first web based map to get to my house correctly (not going on this weird slow backwards country rode, or weaving through the suburbs).
Their web search utility... hey... look at that. No mess, no fuss, just search.
I'm not going to sit up here and pretend like google's been making alot of fresh and new products. I just think it's ton a much better job of addapting these tools from real life objects and making them usable in the internet world. When Yahoo starts offering the ease of use and interface of google products I'll start heading to yahoo, until then, googles got the market cornered.
Anders
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Pretty cool stuff... (Score:4, Interesting)
On a semi-related note, if you haven't checked out MSN Spaces [msn.com] yet it's well worth the look. There's a lot of cool stuff being done in there, like integration with MSN Messenger so you can instantly see when your friends have updated their blog/pictures space-thingy (for the inevitable replies about news aggregators, just think of this as an alternative with a different feature set).
Re:Pretty cool stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I've always kinda thought of Yahoo as another relict - something you look back to in nostalgia but don't really use any more.
To add some background: I registered my Yahoo account in or around '98. Back then, it was still the "Big Y!" and I, like most people, had set the MyYahoo site as my homepage (with all the news, stock market stuff, local weather and TV listings neatly organized in one place). And since everybody used Altavista and/or Yahoo as their search engine, using Yahoo as a portal seemed just natural.
Fast forward two years: Google is the new hotness. I still have my Yahoo account but don't use it anymore. Truth be told, I only kept it because of a few random Yahoo groups mailing lists. And since I had the emails forwarded to my POP3 (and later IMAP) server, there was really no need for me to ever log on to Yahoo again.
Fast forward again - the year is 2005. I haven't used Yahoo since 2001 or so. I have Google set as my homepage. Despite generally and genuinely not liking webmail services, I almost exclusively use Gmail. I also use a web-based RSS aggregator (first a quick 'n' dirty PHP hack I put together one night, and now mostly Bloglines).
Now for the first time in 4 years, I actually logged into my old Yahoo account. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised the account still worked. The email account had been deactivated (thank God for sparing me from almost half a decade old spam). Everything else still worked, and looked a lot sleaker than it used to.
Then I tried their Calendar and, much to my surprise, had no problem syncing it with my PDA. True - it doesn't measure up with Act! 2005, but I didn't really expect a free web-based calendar app to outperform a dedicated, $200 or so software solution.
Anyway, I have to say I'm somewhat impressed. Their interface is still a little bulky but it actually does what I want it to do.
Personally, I believe many average users will see the benefits of open standards because of competition from sites like Yahoo. If I find a superior RSS solution, I can just take my OPML file [opml.org] and switch without any effort whatsoever. Don't like your webmail provider? Just take your mbox file and move it to the webmail service you like (granted, you still have to jump through a few hoops to do this).
Competition really is a good thing, in my book. The important thing is that even if Yahoo doesn't outperform Google in the end, it's still the user who benefits.
Parent
Stick to the strong suits (Score:5, Interesting)
In my case, I teach English in Korea. There's a great webpage that has an English/Korean dictionary [yahoo.com] with phrases of the day, sound files for pronunciation, and a bunch of sample sentence translations for the common words in the dictionary. It's even smart enough to know whether or not Korean or English was the original language and spits out the opposite language accordingly. Granted, that type of feature is probably easy to replicate, but it's still smart thinking, and shows that they're working on services that make things easy for users.
That's not something that Google can offer, even with its translation services, which can be notoriously buggy for going back and forth between Western and Eastern languages anyway.
Now, THAT said, nothing Yahoo's got right now is going to keep me away from google.com for searches. But they still have a decent portal service that integrates with email, along with yahoo groups and games, they probably don't have to worry TOO much yet.
Article is a non-article (Score:5, Informative)
Yahoo has been unpopular among bloggers despite being a solid business. It has been playing catch-up lately with features and very recently has begun to surpass google with the features provided. It's actions haven't been about business, but about popularity among bloggers. As such it has become much more popular among bloggers. Oh, and the new areas Google has been branching into suck. So does it's search ability.
I don't know about other people here, but a blogger saying that company X is more popular among bloggers because of it's recent changes isn't something "that matters" to me.
Then again, I'm not too keen on the blogging community.
It completely lost me when I came up to:
The blog-evangelists unlike press relations folks, only write when there is something important to say. That is if they want to maintain their credibility.
Sorry, but blog evangelists have no credibility among those who like to use their brain when viewing news.
This article does get extra kudo points for irony (displaying google ads on a pro-Yahoo, anti-Google article).
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if it ever occurred to them to just make a better website?
...
Nah, probably not.
Battle forever (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Battle forever (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's like normal e-mail, but with more space!" isn't really innovative
And if that were what they had done, you might have a shred of an argument. Instead of that, however, they offered:
- Full searching of emails
- Proper viewing of email threads, at a level that measures up to many desktop clients
- Toggleable hiding of quoted text in those threads, which is wonderfully nice
- Enough storage that you need never delete an email, making that searching awesome
- Easy marking of emails so you can, with almost no effort, keep every email you ever get archived and still have all the ones that matter separated out
In general, gmail is so many lightyears ahead of the competition that the competition barely deserves recognition.they haven't really bothered fine-tuning, or completely refactoring, their search algorithms since days long ago
If they hadn't done any work with searching, you wouldn't get the occasional relevant images along with a search. And those aren't just their image search images. Run an image search and see what the results are. Hint: they aren't the same.
And I assume that the completely automated googlenews system isn't a change in their searching backend. Afterall, it only searches news sites and automatically sorts their contents into a unified news page, with relevant images and blurbs.
Plus, I'm sure you don't count their improvements to the power of their interface, aside from searching, that they have added. I personally find it quite cool that I can enter '83 kilometers per liter in rods per gallon' and get '83 kilometers per liter = 62 472.9936 rods per US gallon'.
I'm not saying that Google is the greatest company ever. They're pretty good, and I like their tools, but not much more than that. However, when you compare them to Microsoft with IE, I have to argue the point.
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Has been? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, Google does what it does better.
Re:Has been? (Score:4, Informative)
Google: $49.01 Billion [yahoo.com]
Yahoo: $43.57 Billion [yahoo.com]
Explanation for those non-financial types: this is the company value if you bought all the outstanding shares of stock at the current price (which probably never happens). Basically it's an estimate of the company's value as a whole.
I'm sure the "coolness" factor (and optimism) about Google is what is pushing demand for the stock. Investors are excited about it, and bid the stock up. That's how you explain why a company which is much larger, in the same industry, is worth less.
Here's some irony: when I did the research on these two Market Caps, I typed their symbols into Google, and Google pointed me to the Yahoo Finance pages. At least Google is smart enough to partner with Yahoo to provide results in areas that they haven't gotten into yet.
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Who cares... (Score:4, Interesting)
It isn't "wonderful" that yahoogroups, in changing their layout, have now made it difficult and frustrating to search message archives. Not exactly Internet 2.0 company style, is it. If they want "wonderful", give me "useful".
Yahoo! is taking the fight to google's door steps (Score:4, Interesting)
What Yahoo is good for (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo vs Google Search (Score:5, Interesting)
Many new sites are indexed by Google straight away, but don't appear in search results for up to 6 months. It seems to be an attempt by Google to counter spam sites, but it's catching a lot of legitimate sites as well. When I search I like to know that I'm getting up to date results, not just from sites that have been around for more than a few months,
Re:Yahoo vs Google Search (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess the problem for Yahoo is that no matter how good (or up to date) their search is, there will still be a lot of people who will continue to use Google while it's good enough. I'm in that camp. I rarely fail to find what I want with Google so there isn't any impetus to change.
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doesn't matter, yahoo is still too late (Score:4, Interesting)
The other services that yahoo provides are really in different markets and not in direct competition with google. For example, hosting and DSL services with SBC isn't a competitor in the search market. One could conclude that because yahoo concentrates on so many things other then search, it may not be as dedicated to tuning its search algorithm.
Add the fact that yahoo's focus is to sell its search results, even if it means placing irrelevant results at the top of the page, only works in google's "do no evil" favor.
And the real loser is... (Score:5, Interesting)
In a Google vs Yahoo war, the real loser is:
(mini-dumrol)(dum-da!)
Microsoft search.
Seems to me that Google and Yahoo are going to slug it out... Yahoo with their angle of providing numerious services, news, and such.. Being a general modern version of the 'Web portal', and Google leveraging experimental and search technics.
Bunches of features vs small amount of advanced features.
Were does Microsoft fit in? A small amount of non-advanced features?
You have 34% for Google, 31% for Yahoo, and 15% for Microsoft search. I wonder how they will fair within the next couple year.
The year 2005 could be another watershead year in search technology. If the new MSN-search can't make inroads within the next few months.. I don't see it happenning.. period.
The Fundamental problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Yahoo seems to be overfocusing on 'monetizing' every part of their portal (eg, IMvironments, annoying interrupting ads in Yahoo groups, etc etc) compared to Google which focuses on technical innovation first, capitalization later through quality (Adwords) rather than intentional forcing of it.
Until this fundamental management difference is overcome, Yahoo's corporate culture will be counter productive to competing with Google directly.
Did Yahoo ever lose it's mojo? (Score:3, Interesting)
Overture vs. Google ads (Score:4, Insightful)
My 2c.
I'll use Yahoo when... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Their products aren't full of annoyingly intrusive ads.
- Their search results are as good as Google's.
- They offer anything truly unique on the Web.
- They make me feel like I'm using a useful tool, rather than like I'm part of some kind of e-commerce experiment.
I use Yahoo... (Score:3, Interesting)
mail. It is a hold over from when I was younger. I only got the account because MS terminated my hotmail account( thankgod looking back). I suppose I am only with Yahoo still because they work well, spam is small and it takes 2 clicks to get my mail. I have even bought things offered by Yahoo. They must of had $80 off me.
Whats Google got off me even though I use their search engine all the time? A couple of ad clicks? I even have a gmail account but hardly use it at the moment. The
I recently registered for a Flickr account and use it. I might even upgrade after the beta. More money for Yahoo.
Google on the other hand have had very little off me yet I prefer their search and mail. Apart from the fact it picks up keywords. Yahoo's only annoying feature is that it forces me to sign in every day now to get my mail. I think every 24 hours it forgets you.
Why am I telling you this? I suppose its because I use to be a computer geek who was going down the path of linux and learning computer courses. But Yahoo isn't a geek site, google is. Yahoo have got my money, but I still favour Google because of its clean and simple design.
Yahoo Web Services vs Google Web APIs (Score:4, Interesting)
Then again, we're yet to see the sort of buzz around these APIs that Google was able to muster. Where are the Yahoo equivalents of GoogleBrowser [touchgraph.com], Googlism [googlism.com] and GoogleAlert [googlealert.com]? Guess there's still something more emotionally exciting about Google, at least for now...
Re:Yahoo Web Services vs Google Web APIs (Score:4, Informative)
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CONGRATULATIONS!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're the first person EVER to have had that insight. Amazing! What will you do for your next trick?
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Re:Blogging is like a new sort of media (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of what comes out of the mouths of educated professionals is either incorrect, biased, boring or all three. Taking it "down a level" to the average Joe seems torturous.
Podcasting sounded interesting so I downloaded one that was acclaimed as "one of the few worth downloading!" on some site. It was just a college kid who rambles on for literally an hour every (day? week?) about what he's doing (like, "I ate dinner with Mike last night."), its like who gives a shit? Surely this isn't what Blogging is all about? 99% of it can't just be people typing "I took a dump yesterday, and it was a floater. Um. I like sausage pizza. Um.". What am I missing?
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Re:Blogging is like a new sort of media (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bof... (Score:5, Insightful)
Previous virtual communities were based around topics that people had in common - look at LiveJournal. But if you read their press releases and look at the clipart - what Yahoo seem to be doing here is starting at a much more personal scale. It's trying to get you, your mom and your real-life friends all reading and sharing blogs.
And the greatness of something like WordPress doesn't matter if it's a completely standalone system (which is hard to use, nobody has a log in, etc, etc). I think they'll do for Blogs what Geocities did for personal websites - take them mainstream and make them more popular than ever before. The blog is to 2005 what the personal homepage was to 1995.
Sure - the quality of most of them is going to suck, the "long tail" majority will never attract any real traffic, but only friends of the people that made them will be reading, so it should be worthwhile for all involved.
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Re:Bof... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean they'll litter the internet with horrible blogs and the ones that are slightly decent will always be down due to bandwidth restrictions?
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I don't want my mom reading my blog... (Score:5, Funny)
But if you read their press releases and look at the clipart - what Yahoo seem to be doing here is starting at a much more personal scale. It's trying to get you, your mom and your real-life friends all reading and sharing blogs.
I don't want my mom reading my blog. She'll be disturbed by all the porn-related posts.
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