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While we cannot mind-read, or know for sure, we can infer the most likely possibilities through indirect evidence, such as patterns of behavior or their place in the hierarchy.

I can't imagine my own little sample of web hits is statistically so "off"

Top ten reasons why nobody reads your blog.

Seriously though, all it means is that Google users are more interested in the "long tail" (ie: finding John Random Netizen's blogs) than Yahoo users. By your own admission, readers still are able to *find* your site through the Yahoo search engine - which would suggest that Yahoo is still covering you.

Have you tried submitting the search terms that people use to find your site into various engines? The types of terms they submit - and the results on various engines - would probably reveal a few pieces of the puzzle.

All I know is that if Yahoo vanished, I'd have to vastly change my online activities (new Yahoo Mail, News, Finance, del.icio.us, Flickr are invaluable) - whereas if Google vanished, the only thing I'd really miss is Google Reader. I've found that Yahoo Search is just as good as Google Search, it can even do some things that Google can't - internet video and audio search, for example (Google Video only indexes stuff hosted by themselves).

Yada yada yada.. And I'm not talking about your balls. You will need creativity.

And for that...

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/0 00932.html

Easier said than done though.

The thread is about Borland, so the parent takes the opportunity to provide supposedly valuable "insider info" that in actuality is baseless trashing of both .net and Eclipse (plus a few other people and tools), knowing full well that a huge audience that quite likes both of the aforementioned tools will be reading it.

How does such an obvious Happy Troll post get Score:3, Insightful?

So I'm a big reader of gapingvoid.com and www.thelongtail.com. I see a few major problems the "music industry" have. (Do they realize they're just RIAA? Music has always and will always do just fine.)

First, basic identity problem. They don't do anything people can get really thrilled about. Sure it's nice to be able to have your music actually arrive, but it's not like most of us care which studio or trucking company actually got hired in the process, or how it was done. On top of that, they make a lot of customers and good musicians really, really dislike them. For all kinds of reasons you can follow in any number of posts here. It's not helping that an increasing number of people on both ends of the supply and demand chain realize that they can just as easily do without 'em. (Not to mention how distastetful it is to be thought of as part of a "supply and demand chain.")

On top of being largely unnecessary and disliked on average, their entire top ten hits model isn't the best way to deal with art. (And face it, good music is art, not industrial product.) I don't care what's on their top ten hit list - their top ten hit list includes the opinions of thousands of middle school girls, probably several hundred skinheads, a bunch of washed out hippies, and any number of other people who's taste I have absolutely no repsect for. That one song by Inverse Cinematics which can't be found in any store is worth far more to me than a dozen of their top ten lists, and 99.9% of the rest of you wouldn't give that song 10 seconds of your time.

And, to top the whole thing off: Their vision for the future means they stay in control of what gets out there based on mass market research, tight control over distribution, and locking things up with DRM and lawsuits against fans and musicians alike. What they're fighting against is a future in which musicians have a direct relationship with their fans (to the point where some could reasonably do shows in people's living rooms) and both actively seek ways to support eachother having a really good time.

Given those choices, I think it's high time they crawled back under the $sys$ they came from.

"Technology's just chimneypieces." (Paraphrased)