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The Internet Businesses

Yahoo Fights Back in Battle With Google 281

Posted by Zonk 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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Yahoo Fights Back in Battle With Google More

Yahoo Fights Back in Battle With Google

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  • Provide Linux support (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:52AM (#12064477)
    Providing Linux support will help! For example, Google should make Picasa for Linux! They can use autopackage to make it easier for installations.

  • Money that's funny... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:53AM (#12064479) Homepage
    It's profound just how much money these companies will spend to give things away for free.

    • Re:Money that's funny... (Score:5, Informative)

      by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:57AM (#12064490)

      It doesn't sound like they're giving everything away for free, if this quote from Wired, within TFA is accurate:

      The indignity is all the greater when you consider Yahoo!'s numbers: 165 million registered users, 345 million unique visitors a month, $49 billion market cap, and a 62 percent increase in revenue last quarter, bringing 2004 total revenue to $3.6 billion. Yahoo! makes more money and has more patents, services, and users than Google; it even has its own yodel.

  • Yankee Fans Overshadowed? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TPIRman ( 142895 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:53AM (#12064481)
    From TFA: "It is no surprise that many Yahoo insiders felt like the Yankee fans - no matter what they did, they were going to be overshadowed by Google."

    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 /.

  • has been (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:56AM (#12064489) Journal
    "turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes"
    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)

      by dn15 ( 735502 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:27AM (#12064725)
      Really. I don't use Yahoo! myself anymore. But I work in the service department of a computer store, and you might be surprised how many "real" people still have it as their start page or whatever. It's hardly a has-been.
    • The real question is thou, does buying something popular make you popular? If i pay the prom queen for a date does that elevate my status?

      I started using yahoo to use yahoo groups because yahoo swallowed egroups, and my group (and its 500 or so members) a long with it. Then once I had an account anyways I started using the messenger, the email, and now I even have yahoo MX hosting for a couple domains.

      • ((joke))If it were a person i would say it makes you a kerb crawler ;)((/joke)) on the other hand peer presure and the cool factor always work for some people. in the bussines world , it makes your rather profitable and its a dammed good idea to the majority, aslong as you do not basdardise it and alienate the previous members which can have an avalanch effect .
    • I'm sure the OP meant revenue when he said turnover.

      We Americans use "turnover" to refer to emplyee churn.

      Just one of those terms that was confusing when I moved to London for a while...

  • yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zonker ( 1158 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:57AM (#12064493) Homepage Journal
    yahoo has a long history of buying interesting companies to let them rot on their site. they incorporate them but don't extend the features past what they were initially. even worse when they get an interesting new feature they don't take anything interesting from that new project and incorporate it site wide, which for example they could do with flickr.

    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.

    • 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.

      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

      • Yup, not "changed" so what ? GMail is still the best web-based e-mail service/client there is, ever. If they can think out new - and better - ways to extend it, ok, give it to me, but anyways, I don't feel the urging need to see it changed just for the sake of being changed. On the other hand, just int he last year they have come out with quite a few new stuff which they developed, not just bought up (ok, there have been exceptions, think Picasa) some startup and let it rot on the sidewalk. All in all, I do

      • Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Informative)

        by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @06:01AM (#12064797) Journal
        About the only thing GMail has changed in recent memory is that I can now invite 50 people where before I could invite 6.

        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.

      • Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by binand ( 442977 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @08:27AM (#12065085)
        Google desktop search hasn't changed appreciably since it was released.

        As a matter of fact, GDS has had a new release which has:
        1. PDF file support
        2. Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird support
        3. Images and Video support
        4. A plugin based architecture, with plugins for intranet, specific sites-only search, TIFF/ZIP/CHM file searches, C/C++ source code search and even search mIRC archives.

      • Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mmkkbb ( 816035 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @09:49AM (#12065378) Homepage Journal
        Google News hasn't changed in a long time.

        The "Customize this page" thingy is rather new.
      • >>About the only thing GMail has changed in recent memory is that I can now invite 50 people where before I could invite 6.

        Recent integration with Picassa for sending pics, "basic HTML" version for people with ancient browsers.

        >>Froogle hasn't changed in a long time. It still can't accurately pull prices out of many pages and coverage is spotty.

        It's precisely coverage that has changed. It used to be US only, now it's international.

        >>Google News hasn't changed in a long time.

        A customis

    • Re:yahoo's lack of interest... (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <{ten.00mrebu} {ta} {todhsals}> on Monday March 28, 2005 @09:13AM (#12065225) Homepage Journal
      Take, for example, Games Domain [gamesdomain.com]. A site that had been around for AGES (at least five years, probably more like eight or nine) prior to Yahoo acquiring it.

      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.

  • Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hachey ( 809077 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @03:58AM (#12064504)
    I think Yahoo needs to stop counter-attacking and start inovating. Adding more widgets to their site and imitating Google's 1GB mailbox isn't winning anyone over who has the same on the other side. If they want to fight giants like Google, they need to take some risks of their own.


    -----
    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]!
    • Yahoo needs to do both if it is to compete effectivly , invoatition is an important part of this . However they also need to stay competitive by staying up with the current features of competitors.

      PS: please dont use fake sigs , it is rather annoying for those of us who have turned them off to avoid advertisments in signatures , well atleast it isnt the ipod pyramid scheme
    • Whilst i agree your point is valid , You ruin it with a Fake Sig

    • Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:4, Informative)

      by carlivar ( 119811 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:27AM (#12064604)
      Yahoo innovates. Everyone is just too infatuated with Google to notice.

      Just the other day I discovered I can view a traffic overlay on Yahoo Maps. Cool eh?

      Carl

    • Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:42AM (#12064639)
      Hold on here. Google is the upstart. Yahoo is the old man of the internet, the darling of the dot-com boom that survived the crash. Yahoo had all of these before Google existed or became important:

      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.

      • Re:Yahoo needs to change their strat (Score:4, Insightful)

        by aconbere ( 802137 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @06:56AM (#12064894)
        I don't think anyone is argueing that Yahoo doesn't have a whole ton of stuff available... cuase it does. I just think that it's been poorly implimented.

        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
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Pretty cool stuff... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AaronBrethorst ( 860210 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:02AM (#12064515) Homepage
    I'm impressed with what Yahoo has been doing, quite frankly. The way I see it with Google, it appears that they create something that's cool at first(Orkut, SMS 46645) and it never evolves, or it just gets worse over time (Google Groups). For a long time I've seen Yahoo as a vestige of the mid-to-late 90s with their cluttered UI, seemingly slow rate of change, and so forth, but I think that Yahoo 360, among other things, suggests that they're pulling themselves out of this. Now only if they'd improve the ability of small advertisers to use Overture, I'd be even happier.

    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).

    • I think that Google's perception is slowly changing among the Slashdot crowd, search results are less and less useful as they are beeing abused by spam indexing and Google's betas take forever (gmail and google news for instance).

      Google is still "cool" and "not evil" but I strongly believe they need to react quickly against this trend.

      Preception is reality !! I am among people who think that Slashdot has been determinent in Google's launch and popularity. Hey people from Google are you listening ? you nee

    • Re:Pretty cool stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by igrp ( 732252 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @08:58AM (#12065163)
      For a long time I've seen Yahoo as a vestige of the mid-to-late 90s with their cluttered UI, seemingly slow rate of change, and so forth, but I think that Yahoo 360, among other things, suggests that they're pulling themselves out of this.

      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.

  • Stick to the strong suits (Score:5, Interesting)

    by aendeuryu ( 844048 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:08AM (#12064538)
    Yahoo's got a good chance if they continue promoting services that can't be solved just by throwing a bunch of computers at them (no offence to Google intended).

    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)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:09AM (#12064544) Journal
    This article was a waste of 2 minutes. It meandered about a central issue with plenty of buzz-words and enough links to give a Wikipedian a head-ache. It can be summed up to this:
    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).

    • Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JasonUCF ( 601670 )

      ".com Pundits" like Om Malik still startle me with how they manage to think they are relevant. I have to wonder if submissions like this are PR agents for Om. He writes some pithy obvious sort of column every few months and gets a few hyperlinks for it, yet to read his bio it sounds like he is a god of the .com industry. *shakes head*
    • Would you ever buy a book about linux by Linus Torvalds ?

      Would you ever watch a TV broadcast about lizards hosted by a guy who has studied lizards all his life ?

      Then why don't you think some bloggers can have credibility ?
  • Google is getting google-bombed .

    They are both ok.

    But I would like an alternative.

  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:11AM (#12064555) Homepage
    That's... some pretty complicated plans.

    I wonder if it ever occurred to them to just make a better website?

    ...

    Nah, probably not.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 )
      I don't know about you, but have you actually seen Yahoo lately? A lot less ads. Very clean interface in all areas. The spam blocker in their webmail pretty much bests all. Hotjobs is beginning to rival Monster in usability.

      I still use Google daily for search, but for everything else I'm beginning to use Yahoo.

  • Pissing Contest (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tiktok ( 147569 )
    With all of their clout, sheer presence, and complete dominance over the Internet, these power players don't need to get into a pissing contest.

    Now, this is a pissing contest [geekoftheday.com].

  • Battle forever (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jekler ( 626699 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:14AM (#12064566)
    These companies can battle until their blue in the face. It really doesn't matter, they're just taking turns one-upping each other in the most insignificant ways possible. It would be like pepsi and coke battling each other by making their bottles larger, 1/100000th of an ounce at a time. Sorry if this angers anyone, but even Google's great search technology has become dated. It's the "IE won the battle" syndrome. Since no one else has closed in on their domination, they haven't really bothered fine-tuning, or completely refactoring, their search algorithms since days long ago. Although Yahoo gave up on trying to offer a good search years before Google even got started. All I'm saying is that I wish they'd start competing by offering truly significant innovations. "It's like normal e-mail, but with more space!" isn't really innovative (beyond the initial "Wow!" factor). Try something like a 100% standards compliant web browser with native in SVG support, and an XML parser. I'm the first to say that Google is ahead of the game, but the problem is the game is penny-ante.

    • Re:Battle forever (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jameth ( 664111 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @08:50AM (#12065138)

      "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.

  • Has been? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gordgekko ( 574109 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:16AM (#12064572) Homepage
    By almost every financial metric Yahoo! is actually doing better than Google. I wish I could be that kind of "has been."

    That said, Google does what it does better.

    • Re:Has been? (Score:4, Informative)

      by hugesmile ( 587771 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @08:06AM (#12065040)
      One major measure that Google is wining at is Market Cap:
      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.

  • Who cares... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ewe2 ( 47163 ) <ewetoo@gmail . c om> on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:20AM (#12064582) Homepage Journal
    ...how wonderful Yahoo thinks it is? I'm not inclined to think they're "wonderful". I don't care about their image.

    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)

    by btbytes ( 625362 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:21AM (#12064585) Homepage
    While Yahoo! have been pretty nimble recently, especially with the improved search , aquiring flickr, yahoo! API , firefox toolbar , their email service has to go a looong way before they can tempt new users. Some of the things that would make me use more of my existing Yahoo id, * So, you have increased the email space to 1GB. But whats killer about that ?. * Integrate y! mail, y! chat and 360 (whenever that's ready) so that i can search my emails, chats, my blogs ,external blogs i've syndicated in my yahoo! . ( Think of Gnome's Dashboard project here.) * Integrate Flickr! into my Yahoo! mail search. For example, when I search for bangpypers , i should also get to see the photos of bangpypers meetups, stored in my flickr account or my contact's accounts. Its the RSS people... * I'm very keen about seeing the chat session being saved as 'conversations' in my yahoo mailbox and being able read/search. No, saving sessions on to the disk some how does not work out. * Remove all the ads, make the interface really lightweight * put POP access back; that was the reason I started using Yahoo! in the first place * Add intelligent search to email ala gmail . This should be trivial to yahoo After a long time, I'm rooting for Yahoo!. Perhaps, I look to yahoo! as being a competetive underdog. Meanwhile, google is playing catch up in some areas and seems to be running into problems (302 page hijacking)
    • They do have pop access, but you have to pay for it.

      I use Yahoo mail to download my email from two external accounts and read it online (neither account has shell access). This is a feature Gmail DOESNT have. Then I can POP the mail from yahoo to my local machine. Its all part of Yahoo Mail Plus

  • What Yahoo is good for (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Capricous ( 847089 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:22AM (#12064588)
    Yahoo seems to do a much better job indexing small websites and user pages than google. Google usually has a harder time finding sites that are not linked to often and can lead to trouble when you are looking for that obscure piece of information.

  • Yahoo vs Google Search (Score:5, Interesting)

    by s7uar7 ( 746699 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:22AM (#12064593) Homepage
    I've actually started using Yahoo's search again, something I never thought I'd do. The reason? Google's sandbox.

    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)

      by RedWizzard ( 192002 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:23AM (#12064717)
      I can't imagine the lag in results making it into the index would bother me unless I already knew a specific site existed.

      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.

    • I also use Y!'s search for that reason, and here's a personal observation.

      I'm working on a "stealth mode" startup thingy (whatever; we haven't published the URL yet) and I noticed I was getting the Yahoo Slurper in my logs.

      I thought about it for a minute and realized they were there because *we* linked to *them* -- ie, they're checking their referrer logs and going to index new sites they find there.

      I searched for $SECRET_PROJECT on Yahoo and sure enough, we were there (but they were nice enough, or mayb

  • doesn't matter, yahoo is still too late (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tokengeekgrrl ( 105602 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:29AM (#12064606)
    I think yahoo will always be playing catch up in regards to search because google changed the basic assumptions of search with their PageRank algorithm. So much is driven by PageRank in regards to advertising revenue, that yahoo and msn.com must tailor their search results according to google's terms.

    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.
    • 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 ...

      I think Yahoo!'s Focus! is to advertise Yahoo! Itself!, the selling being a byproduct of the Yahoo! Advertising!

      At least that's what I can surmise from the endless variations of "Do you Yahoo!?" that keep me busy rewriting procmail scripts to filter out the crap, not to mention the advertising-laden "Yahoo! Groups" rubbish that seems to show up everywhere, spanning so many

  • And the real loser is... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:29AM (#12064607)

    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.
    • In a Google vs Yahoo war, the real loser is: (mini-dumrol)(dum-da!) Microsoft search.

      Really? Take a look to MSN 7, where they put a text field with a "search" button in the main window which suprisingly takes you to a msn search windows (which BTW don't follows system configuration and opens the window in IE even if you configured other browser as the default one for your system...) In fact, they'll probaby include their msn search bar as a default option in the messenger installer, so they'll have +90%

  • The Fundamental problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Samir Gupta ( 623651 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @04:31AM (#12064613) Homepage
    Yahoo is now managed by the marketing and business people; Google continues to be run by the engineers.

    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.
    • Small disagreement....

      compared to Google which focuses on technical innovation first, capitalization later through quality

      Almost right, but I think it is really money first, and making money by truly beeing innovative, rather than heavy handed business. It is still economically driven, but takes a (IMO) much better aproach at making money.

    • if Google is run by engineers, then why don't they have:

      -creative commons search
      -rss on a my.google.com page
      -rss everywhere
      -an image search that actually works
      -traffic overlay onto their maps

  • Did Yahoo ever lose it's mojo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by qwerbus ( 583999 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:21AM (#12064712) Homepage
    I think a lot of people don't realize the immense difference between Yahoo and Google. And sure Yahoo may be a little upset about how little press it gets, but it's really not in an all out brawl with Google. Sure they're competing in the search engine field, but Yahoo's a complete media portal where Google's all about the technology. That should really be recognized.

  • ConnectU.com (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm just waiting for someone to snatch up www.i2hub.com [i2hub.com], www.connectu.com [connectu.com], www.stallscribbles.com [stallscribbles.com], and www.jungalu.com [jungalu.com]. They're all run by the same company, and they target the college market. All the sites are popular with students (different segments). ConnectU has one of the best social networking technologies. i2hub, one of the most popular desktop tools for college students just recently released i2hub 2.0, which ties in ConnectU directly. Pretty cool stuff these guys are releasing. Their founder

  • Overture vs. Google ads (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PsiPsiStar ( 95676 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:46AM (#12064762)
    Having advertised consulting services on both Overture and Google, I can say that while Overture ads cost more per click, they deliver more value per dollar. I don't know if this is because I'm selling somthing business related and overture is better for that, or if it's because of somthing else.

    My 2c.

  • I'll use Yahoo when... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mori Chu ( 737710 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:46AM (#12064765)
    - Their front web page is less cluttered than my dorm room.

    - 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)

    by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @05:51AM (#12064776) Homepage Journal

    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 .mac and yahoo ones are serving me fine. (Remember you pay for .mac)
    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)

    by manmanic ( 662850 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @06:11AM (#12064814)
    Yahoo's biggest step to getting their mojo back was their release of the Yahoo Web Services [yahoo.net], inviting the hacker community to build applications around their search technologies. Yahoo have gone further than the Google Web APIs [google.com], providing access to image, news, video and local search as well as the web search that Google offers.

    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...

  • Like I've stated before, I work at Best Buy's Geek Squad service. No need to reiterate. When I'm "off duty", I do free-lance computer repair for people, referenced-based only. I was recently at a lady's house in the middle of Bumblefuck, and she's having me install her computer (it was relocated for insurance reasons after a fire and she'd just got it back) back into it's spot. Had to reinstall Windows, she had ME... so I did her a favour and gave her XP Home. Anyways... the only 3rd-party software that I'd
  • Although I can only speak for myself and my friends, I would be unsuprised if this held true for most people, but I know that I certainly haven't stopped using Yahoo, just the crappy parts of Yahoo.
    Yahoo messenger for example, alawys seemed to be the best IM client (servers more stable than MSN, more features than AIM, and my friends actually use it, unlike Jabber). Yahoo groups is a great thing, probably the best thing Yahoo does, and I would suspect this is probably the only way that a lot of people use

  • Changing perceptions of Yahoo! and Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crunch_crumble ( 842785 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @07:35AM (#12064975)

    I don't think Yahoo! has ever been a dot.has.been. Yahoo! is such a large company that they are perceived as a somewhat faceless corporate behemoth (at least among techies). Google, on the other hand is perceived as a more nimble, dynamic and adaptable company. Google is, of course, much smaller than Yahoo!, but still quite a large company (1900+ employees).

    For techie folks who follow the Yahoo! bloggers, that "faceless" perception of Yahoo! is changing I think. Ironically, Google is beginning to appear a bit like a faceless corporation in the way they present themselves on the Web. Anyone who reads Google's official blog [google.com] can't fail to notice how phoney and vapid it sometimes seems. As if each entry that's been posted has been run through a "press-release" language filter (I wonder if every entry is vetted before being posted). The other aspect is their secrecy - this is understandable to an extent. For me, the problem lies with their purchase of Blogger - I wish they would give some hint of what they plan to do with the service. Nothing has been announced or information given on the direction of the service - meanwhile, other companies like Six Apart [sixapart.com] are forging ahead with new features and growing mindshare. Now, Yahoo! is jumping into the fray with their imminent launch of Yahoo! 360 [yahoo.com].

    I really dislike the new re-design of Google groups. I'm sure they must have done some user-testing on this, but it just seems like a leap backwards in many respects from their previous design.

    Finally, I'm sure that Google remains the default search for many people, but I have noticed that other search engines like Alltheweb [alltheweb.com] and Yahoo! Search [yahoo.com] often give comparable results. I don't think one can say (with as much certainty as in the past) that Google always provides the best search results. As an example, compare a search for the terms Open Source Usability on Google [google.co.uk], Yahoo! [yahoo.com] and AlltheWeb [alltheweb.com]. Not much to choose between them.

  • I agree with the prevoious posters that yahoo is quite innovative, and I often check them out to see what they're up too. But I always leave quickly because their services doesn't extend to my country. I realize that living in a country with 5 million inhabitants instantly disqualifies you for a lot of services, but at least I can use all our special characters in google search.
  • Don't forget the vast influx of conspiracy-minded Lizards [littlegreenfootballs.com] moving away from Google. I mean, were I Sergey Brin, I'd be tremblin' in my booties.

    --grendel drago
  • It always seems like google engineers its own programs, while yahoo has to buy it from other companies... and it never turns out to work quite as well as google's webware...

  • Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @11:17AM (#12065908) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at the link to my JE in my SIG. Last week I complained about Wired magazine jumping on this retarded new trend. Why all the Google bashing all of the sudden? It's certainly not coming from people who actually know anything about how to design decent free web services that mean anything. Yahoo has had nothing but a useless search engine, crappy web mail and a useless bunch of junk on their portal for as long as I can see. Google, on the other hand has begun offering much better services and they do it by spending less money and having a smaller staff than Yahoo. They make extensive use of mostly standards compliant protocols/web design tools. And they use a Linux cluster to do it all. How much better can you get than that? In my view, all Yahoo had during their boom was a bunch of venture capital that they squandered foolishly. All they are trying to do right now is get more venture capital. Witness the STUPID notion that by upping their Yahoo mail quota to 1 gig, that they somehow compete with GMail. Bzzt! Wrong. They don't "get it". It's not the storage space stupid. It's the archiving, mail search and threading features that make GMail a cut above the rest. GMail almost makes mail as quick and easy as IM, but with the permanence of e-mail. Yahoo messenger blows chunks. Yahoo search engine is completely useless unless you're in the first grade and can't do a proper search. Sorry... Yahoo is nothing but a bunch of losers who focus more on money than technology. Technology is what this is all about, leave the money grubbing to the suits.

  • Web 2.0 compliant (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Audity ( 600754 ) on Monday March 28, 2005 @01:20PM (#12066982)
    Can someone tell me what "Web 2.0 compliant". Whatever it is "Web 2.0" sounds really big, and I want to know the details. I googled for the phrase and found nothing (google musn't have indexed the slashdot index recently). The term compliant leads me to believe there's an RFC or something out there I can look through. Does anyone have links to any info?

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