Yahoo to Dump Google 280
unassimilatible writes "The Wall Street Journal is reporting (paid subscription required) that Yahoo! plans to dump Google as its primary search technology. In a major revamp, Yahoo will also add personalization and customization features to extend the usefulness of searches and expand its use of "paid inclusion." Yahoo news has picked up the story. Might be time to rethink that IPO."
Googling it.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Googling it.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Googling it.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Googling it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not entirely true, if you take it the other way. The more popular google became, the more spammers realised its worth the time it takes to figure out how to manipulate the search engine until their page is on top. Google was much more useful when it was still on the list of effecient and useful geek-only tools, now that everyone either uses it directly or uses it via proxy(like yahoo was), the results are often times spam.
Re:Googling it.. (Score:4, Informative)
It's true though, that this doesn't really affect the spidering aspect of Google's knowledge.
The other shoe drops... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would seem that the relevance of Google results is declining, precisely because so many people are working 24 hours a day to get their site ranked higher, and Kelkoo in particular seems to have done very well at that. www.alltheweb.com [alltheweb.com] looks a lot like Google but isn't suffering at the moment from database pollution. I've seen it mentioned before on Slashdot, I think we'll be seeing it again. However, the plot thickens - if you click the "About" link on the AllTheWeb homepage you'll see that "AlltheWeb is a business of Overture Services, Inc." Now we know that Yahoo! acquired Overture back on October 7, 2003 ... and so there's no need for them to keep paying Google I guess. Especially not with a company that has a similar looking site!
What Google said at the time of Yahoo! integration of Google results:
The warning bells are ringing, since Yahoo! leaving - having been the loudest validation of the original Google business model - is terrible news in my opinion. It is of note that the Wall Street Journal (and not cnet news or CNN online or ZDNet, etc) picked up on this. The IPO is starting to look less rosy. What I would like to know is whether in the Yahoo! boardroom there was a long debate about the timing of this decision, and indeed what kinds of money were changing hands with Google for provision of searches and whether the price was set to go up for 2004!
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:2, Interesting)
A search for "alltheweb sucks" on alltheweb brings up nothing on the first page that's critical of alltheweb. Maybe they aren't big enough to be hated, but the results look, well, suck
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:2)
Yahoo owns both Inktomi and Overture... for them to be dumping Google and moving to the suppliers that they own outright is something that was easy to see coming, the only question was when.
Whatever. Yahoo has no hope of designing a search algorithm better than google's within a few months. They might switch to one of the others, but no one will care. Google will still be the best search. Personally, I think Yahoo just fucked themselves because using Google's search might have brought back some of t
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:2)
I for one welcome this. At best yahoo designs a great search engine that betters google. At worst they push google to make a better engine.
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:2)
If you were so inclined, you could try the following experiment: 1) Check your current ranking; 2) Stop your adwords campaign and watch your ranking drop after a few days; 3) Start up the same adwords campaign with no other changes, and watch your ranking climb.
But then, my site's ranking was never very good anyway, so maybe that's all just coincidence. I never did engage in any of the games like keyword spamming or shill linking. Yes, I'm sure that ther
Re:The other shoe drops... (Score:2)
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:2, Interesting)
When you do a search on Yahoo these days, you get the same exact results you would get on Google. Difference being a lot more crap on the front page to load up on Yahoo as opposed to Google.
Yahoo dropping Google is a good thing. Who wants every search engine using the same underlying technology and returningthe same results? Different technologies will, hopefully, bring wider variery of results.
Impact on Google revenues & profits (Score:5, Interesting)
You're kidding me. I can't remember the last time I ever bothered using Yahoo!'s search function.
The issue of Yahoo dumping Google has nothing to do with whether Yahoo sucks or not. Instead, this is an issue of Google's long-term business outlook. Google is partially dependent on large contracts from major portals like Yahoo and Google also faces the potential of losing to another search engine provider.
As wonderful as Google is now, it is in a very risky industry. The fact that search sites like Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, etc. can go from darling to moribund suggests that the industry has high turnover. And then there is Microsoft which has expressed interest in competing with Google.
Were Google publically traded right now, this news would create a major hit to the stock price. This suggests that any potential buyers of Google IPO stock should think long and hard about the likelihood of expecting more unexpected bad news.
doubtfully (Score:3, Insightful)
Google however is finding a larger market in advertising than it thought it could, and despite your claim makes most of its profit from smaller private contracts.
Yahoo is just about the -only- large portal contract they had. I mean, who else is there? And it
Re:doubtfully (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I know, Google is still the exclusive search partner for a little company called AOL [aol.com].
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now when I want specific examples or contexts, such as "Do related terms X and Y occur on the same web page or in the same usenet article?", Google is great. Still, the crap has to be picked out.
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:2)
Right now I can find searches that give the same or very similar results (try: electricity lightning rod) or somewhat dissimilar results (try: actresses).
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:2)
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:3, Informative)
enjoy!
Re:Might be time to rethink that IPO? (Score:2)
First Dibs (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, I guess they'd have first dibs on the story, eh?
Posting Paid Subscription links... (Score:4, Informative)
Is complete horseshit especially when you can find other links. [google.com] Take for instance this link. [forbes.com]
Enjoy the reading fellow /.ers.
Rethink their IPO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rethink their IPO? (Score:2)
Not the best for the people who buy the IPO, but the people who make the decision to offer an IPO are the people who presently own the company.
Re:Rethink their IPO? (Score:3, Interesting)
Google has remained private as long as possible. If their VCs were looking to cash out, they could have done it before the crash. And everyone has been asking them to IPO for the last 2 years to kickstart the stock market. It was smart of them to wait until the DJ was above 10,000, but probably unnecessary.
The reason they are going public is because SEC rules force companies with a certain number of
Remember Yahoo OWNS 2% of Google... (Score:2)
Yahoo bot? (Score:5, Interesting)
If Yahoo is going live with a search engine that soon, why haven't I seen a bot on my site (google page rank of 5, so not obscure) which looks Yahoo-ish? Anyone else spotted a bot you think might belong to yahoo?
Re:Yahoo bot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yahoo bot? (Score:3, Informative)
Don't claim to know if that means anything.
Re:Yahoo bot? (Score:2)
> belong to yahoo?
Inktomi.
Re:Yahoo bot? (Score:3, Interesting)
FAST-WebCrawler from Overture and Slurp from Inktomi.
Personally, since Google has spidered a large percentage of the pages on my sites and Inktomi/Overture has only done a very minimal amount of pages, they're going to have to really pick up their index size if they hope to compete with Google and ATW on finding anything that isn't on a site's home page.
Re:Yahoo bot? (Score:2)
More painful for Yahoo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:More painful for Yahoo (Score:5, Insightful)
Rethink the IPO, heck yeah. (Score:4, Funny)
That's too bad (Score:2)
It was convenient to be able to googlewash several search engines at the same time.
IPO statement (Score:2)
Golly isn't that timing odd (Score:2)
Day #2 - Yahoo announces they dump google
You don't suppose this isn't a coincidence or that it has nothing to do with technology do you?
In a former life I swam with the sharks on Wall St. This reeks of "they're up to someting".
But no matter, if Yahoos replacement for google is any good it'll yield more or less the same search results as google.
Google may lose some ad revenue over this, which makes them worth a few gazillion less, maybe.
But people who rank highly in google s
Insightful? *cough* (Score:2, Informative)
You mean because Yahoo are dropping Google? Man, *that* was unexpected, no-one knew that was coming.
Seriously, if that's your reason, then you (or they) obviously didn't do any thinking or research in the first place.
As for Yahoo fighting back, I didn't see *that* coming either.
Yahoo switching to some other provider (Score:2)
searches, personalization, and privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be interesting to see what this develops into. I'm already a bit uncomfortable with the thought of such a "service." While it may be "convenient" to create a profile of your interests and perhaps an overview of previous searches and marking of what were "good" search results, I don't like the idea of Yahoo! storing all this data in the first place. How do I know that they won't sell this data to marketers? (Most privacy policies are bullshit.) Or give it to government officials looking for terrorists and political opponents and the such? Will I have to give up a lot of personal data in order to get search for information results that don't lead me to sites that try to sell me the product I'm trying to research?
Thanks, but for now I think I'll stick to spending time and effort to get the search results I want, no matter how big of a pain in the ass it is, rather than sell my soul for the same.
Re:searches, personalization, and privacy (Score:2)
If they(not you) operate out of the United States, the US PATRIOT act says that the govt is allowed access to any comercial database they desire, denying them is a federal crime, telling someone you gave them access is a federal crime. Unlike most new scary laws, this has already been used atleast once. Can't remember any references, but I vaugely remember something about the US govt trying to find people that
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes and no. Google's great strength is that it looks for links to a document as an indication of the quality of the document. In other words, it leverages evaluations of a document collectively made by humans. That works (or at least, worked) fabulously well for a most hand-written Internet, or in a case where someone familiar with the knowledge domain had written automated software to cross reference specific sections of it.
But what if there's nothing for PageRank to go on? What if you have 100,000 pre-Web documents in SGML/RTF/Word/FrameMaker, without any hyperlinking at all? Well, then all Google has to go on is keywords... it's "edge" evaporates.
Google's business is a commodity - what they have right now is a great brand and a solid (but not particularly spectacular) technology. When they have a technology that can do what Google Answers does, then it'll be safe for them to IPO, but not before.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
When they have a technology that can do what Google Answers does, then it'll be time to sell all your shares in everything and go and live out in the wilderness for a few years, just in case...
Much scarier than Y2K.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
1. Google.com is great
2. Google, the company, makes an enterprise solution.
3. Google.com == Google, the company == Google's enterprise solution.
4. Therefore, the enterprise solution is also great.
The appliance is basically a packaged version of the Google.com application. Obviously, this is no surprise, as we wouldn't expect Google to develo
Re:Why? (Score:2)
What I mean is that you can post a question on Google Answers and get an intelligent, context sensitive response. At the moment, the only way to do that is for GA to offload the actual thinking to humans and just handle the interface. When Google (or someone) has natural language parsing and just enough AI to do GA without human
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Also, perhaps Google has improved, but the performance specs I read when they introduced this were hardly impressive, and probably the worst out of the whole group.
Yahoo's more than a search engine (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yahoo's more than a search engine (Score:2)
Google has search "types" like addresses,
Yahoo is free. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that Yahoo will be using another search technology, there might be a reason for using Yahoo again. Some useful things that may never show up on Google might show up on Yahoo, so it might make for a useful alternate search engine now, especially if Google continues to slide as it's doing. Then again, we still have old Astalavista for that, as well.
Look closer... (Score:5, Informative)
Yahoo! plans to dump Google as its primary search technology.
The word primary is very important here. It implies that Yahoo! is not completely abandoning Google, but is making it second string instead. If they're still letting us access Google, even if it requires a couple of extra clicks, then I can't see this as entirely bad. I like Google and it's my first pick, but I certainly don't limit myself to Google...
I did not see in the article where Yahoo! is completely dropping Google. If it's in there, I missed it.
It's like Burgerking buying bugers from McDonalds (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I just don't find value in the portal service Yahoo offers. I also don't shop at Wal-Mart. I would rather use my bookmarks bar to go the site I like for Investment tools, another for maps, another for searching, and another for e-mail.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Marketing 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree that it is Marketing 101 to throw in the towel when you see your competition has a better product. To me, Marketing is about differentiation.
There are core features a product must have to be considered (like a car must be street legal), and the rest is what differentiates the product (lik
Re:Marketing 101 (Score:2, Interesting)
This is Natural, and Probably Positive (Score:2, Interesting)
Yahoo execs must play a lot of Risk. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same thing here... Yahoo teamed up with Google as long as the relationship was substantially beneficial to Yahoo. However... with Google's recent IPO... it is clear to the Yahoo suits that shareholders are going to want Google to "put out". This most likely would include a more full-figured search portal which would very likely ensure that Yahoo loses most of the armies it gets at the beginning of its turn and pretty eliminate any potential for new Risk cards. So Yahoo decided to screw Google first and try to solidify their position as the premier search portal for all the web refuse that isn't already part of the AOL empire.
Re:Yahoo execs must play a lot of Risk. (Score:2)
Not as much risk as you think (Score:2)
In the short term Yahoo wins no matter what.
Yahoo picked up its own story? Neato. (Score:3, Funny)
Yahoo News picked up the story that Yahoo was in the news? Now *that's* some good searching technology! You can bet I'll be using them to search news!
Buying time ... (Score:2, Funny)
In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
Great, maybe Google will improve. (Score:3, Interesting)
All the spam domains I checked into last November came up registered by the same people, too:
Venera Pictures, LLC
Samantha Dayk (samdayk@msn.com)
+1.14107857078
FAX: +1.-
1170 S. Chelton Rd.
Colorado Springs, CO 80910
US
Gateway Traffic, LLC
Sean Der (seander@verizon.net)
+1.4107857078
FAX: +1.-
102 Hunts Bluff Road
Sparks, MD 21152
US
If they add a Bayesian algorithm on incoming pages (comparing link farm pages to ham, and determining it's spam), and keep track of the whois informatin for domains (all the spam domains I found using random search queries led back to those false names in the whois database), Google's results could probably stay non-erroneous for some time.
It's really a tragedy that advertisers feel they can skip paying Google, and instead wreck Google for users and other advertisers, causing people to move on the potentially greener pastures [alltheweb.com]. We've had IM partially ruined by spam, email almost ruined, and places like Google ruined. When will laws be passed so that purposefully attacking online systems is as illegal and easily prosecutable as defacing buildings?
It's about time... (Score:2)
I already use yahoo mail, and I love MyYahoo. I would gladly wait a whole second or two, or even wait for em
Not your father's Yahoo (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Too dumb to use anything EXCEPT whatever search engine they're spoon-fed by Yahoo.
2. Too smart to ever use ANYTHING spoon-fed to them by Yahoo.
I'm a Yahoo user. But even when they switched their search engine to Google, I still tracked
I'm sorry, but they use Inktomi (Score:2)
Kris
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:5, Insightful)
or check out the information about digital cameras on photo.net
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that Google needs to do something about e-commerce sites. Perhaps finalize the froogle [google.com] beta and dump the e-tailers into there where they belong. (Of course I realize that it's very, very easy for me to say this, and extremely hard for Google to implement it.)
In the meantime, I can think of several ways to combat this sort of information glut. This search [google.com] provides much better results in my opinion, but can be easily combated by the spammers by removing the keywords I'm using as filters.
I don't envy google. Their own popularity is killing their usefulness as a search for retail products. For actual information, such as the governmental structure of Canada [google.com], I've found they're still the best engine though.
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
Exactly. Have you checked out www.com [www.com]? It bills itself as "where the web begins", but its search engine is entirely ads. Google, OTOH, has been struggling under the mighty weight of unscrupulous morons who prefer to ruin the internet than to make dollars honestly, but their information sea
Not a good example (Score:2)
I do agree with your last assment though, that Google should try and do a little something to stem the tide of poor results - some sort of default exclusions you could set up in a cookie might be interesting, though Goole is all about simplicity and that might make them a bit too hard to use.
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2, Insightful)
I would love to see a way to optionally strip commercial traders from the results.
Re:Karma Whore Alert! (Score:4, Informative)
Now go to your room!
Re:Karma Whore Alert! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:4, Informative)
Learn to search. Using a search engine properly is a little more than dumping a word into the tiny box.
Google offers pretty good advanced search options, which you can use to great effect to weed out the stuff you don't want, refine the search, offer alternative spellings or keywords, etc.
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2, Interesting)
Not exactly. The search engine user just has to be a little more search engine savvy. For instance, if you are looking for information about the 'place' Bermuda, but want to avoid all the advertisments, put "Bermuda -hotel" into google. Shows up with airline ticket ads? Then change it to "Bermuda -hotel -airfare". Basically you can strip down your searches, get through all the chaff and find what you are looking for.
Yes, Google is overrated (Score:4, Interesting)
The only good thing about google is that it often lists the official page of something first. But if you aren't looking for the official page, you are out of luck..
Google became popular because it listed extremely relevant results directly on the first results page, but it is in my experience a completely different beast nowadays..
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
Google for digital camera [google.com]. The first 3 results are "digital camera reviews", "Digital Camera Resource Page", and "complete guide to digital cameras", exactly the opposite of what parent claims.
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
What'd be nice is to be able to drop any sites from your search results that also appear on Froogle. Barring that, try appending "-sale" and "-buy", which granted will knock out a number of non-commercial sites as well, but will take out most of the commercial ones.
It's not like any
Same here. (Score:2)
Search engines should be able to harness the collective willigness of people to create useful resources, otherwise we are condemned to be flooded by spam.
Re:Maybe Yahoo is changing for a reason (Score:2)
Before the Net became too big for categories, and that's not reversible, nor tractable anymore.
DMoz ain't a search engine, but a directory just like Yahoo! but less mature if wider. And it is almost stalled face the enormity of the Net, being hierarchical too. It isn't hopeless, but it would need to become database-based, just as Yahoo! needs.
About V
Re:Yahoo Move (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember back before 'yahoo.com' when they were on Berkeley's server ( I think... I could look it up but the school isn't important ) and I had to rummage around for the address when I wanted to use it... nowadays I'd just google for it and have it immediately. Back then it was actually useful... almost no commercial content, the database was smaller (more accurate checking) and younger (not so full of crap). Nowadays they have everything under the sun, and I'm sure I'm not
Re:Yahoo Move (Score:2)
I do. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you google or yahoo? (Score:2, Interesting)
The (IMO incredibly annoying) "Do you Yahoo!?" advertising aside, I note that I hear "google" used as a verb far more than "yahoo" (actually, short of the aforementionded annoying commercials, I've never heard "yahoo" used as a verb).
That's not just in conversation with my tech-geek acquaintances; I'm talking about popular culture, too (although I'm pressed to recall which shows I heard it on). The reason it stood out in my mind was that there were maybe two or three separate such usages in prime time th
Or to put it more succintly (Score:2)
"Do you Yahoo! ?" is something people filter out.
(and it was, in response to an earlier post, Stanford, not Berkely. I think it was akebono.stanford.edu/~yahoo in its earliest incarnation.)
Re:Word to Yahoo! (and Google, too) (Score:3, Insightful)
With Mozilla [mozilla.org], you can open links in new windows (or tabs, whatever you like more) with a single click on the middle mouse button. Anytime on any webpage.
Re:Word to Yahoo! (and Google, too) (Score:2)
??? I've been doing this forever in "plain Google". Just get a browser that actually support this feature (Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror).
Re:Word to Yahoo! (and Google, too) (Score:2)
Idiots and yahoo (Score:2)
But no matter, Yahoos replacement can hardly generate vastly different search results from google and expect to be useful no can it?
But wait, it gets better (Score:2)
Keep in mind the nice men that are taking google public also took Yahoo public. Cough.
Yes. (Score:3, Informative)
Some claim Alltheweb [alltheweb.com] is better than google, but I find its about equal.
Some other experimental engines I've seen have alot of potential, especially the ones who come up with narrowing suggestions and do accurate self-categorization. Teoma [teoma.com] is a good exa