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Google Vs. Yahoo: When We Last Met...
I-R-Baboon writes "The New York Times has this article
on the battle between the once #1 Yahoo and the current champion and #1 Google. Yahoo wants it's throne back and is ready to throw the gloves off and mix it up with Google. But can the uncluttering of their page, toning down the ads, and using some features not currently offered on Google give them their title back?" Of course, Yahoo! will have to get in line behind Microsoft as well.
Yahoo! needs to go beyond what Google offers. This is partly true because Google is #1 and "inertia" among web users matters, but this is only one reason that Yahoo! needs to get its act into high gear. The ther reason is Google Labs. Google is focusing resources on research right now (one of the reasons that an IPO would be inappropriate, since research is a risky use of money). In the long run, Yahoo! will have to compete with Google's research, since otherwise they'll be chasing a moving target. Even if Yahoo! reaches Google's standards, Google will always be ready to roll out a few more features. The question is: Can Yahoo! persuade its shareholders to back that kind of long-term commitment to R&D in today's economy?
Make cheese not war 8:)
I'm sure that one of the _BIG_ reasons for Google's success is its nearly text only nature. It works beautifully on dialup internet, which is still like 9 out of 10 people using the internet. Until Yahoo strips off everything on their page except their yahoo logo and their search box, they won't be able to "compete" with Google in the eyes of your average dialup user.
-AX
I've always seen Yahoo and Google as two different tools.
Yahoo to me is more of a catalog, when I know specifically what type of stuff im looking for, I can find a list of sites.
Google, I put in some keywords and it pulls up pages it thinks are relevant.
For *my* (not necessarily everyone's) purposes, Google is more useful, but Yahoo is still good and a great site. Aside from toning down the obnoxious ads, I think it doesnt need to change much.
56k users don't want to load adverts etc. while Yahoo says they're going to use text ads mostly, they're still going to have them (if related), google is fast even for narrowband. While Yahoo seems to be still concentrating on how much profit they're making out of their search primarily, and secondarily on their users, google seems to the other way round.
First of all, Google does not have ADS as far as I know.
Well that comment just proves how well Google has managed to weave ads into their result pages without alienating/annoying people! It's a pity that more sites don't take the hint and remove the pop-up/pop-under/flash-within hell that drives people away from their pages.
The ads that REALLY drive me nuts now are those f*cking embedded Flash animations that appear over the top of the content I'm trying to read! Who, honestly, thought those would be a good idea? Better still, who actually ever lets one of those ads play out before hitting the (usually randomly located) close buttons?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
...Moreover, Yahoo is trying to distinguish its search results by including information from its array of other services, many of them not offered by Google...
..For example, someone searching for "Yankee scores" will see the results of the most recent Yankees game in addition to a list of baseball sites...
correct me if i am wrong...but isnt the *lack* of these nifty little *features* that are suppose to distinguish search results what made google so popular in the first place? Why is the concept of simplicity so hard for major sites to understand?
yes that is cute isnt it? but i wasnt looking for a list of baseball sites, i was looking for the yankees scores, yet yahoo cluttered up my search results with *extras*. Screw it, i am going to go search this on google.....
Everyone is trying to compete with google by intergrating new features an innovations into their sites. Google does one thing. It searches. Thats what search engines are for, search on the critera i give you, and give me the results. Its very simple. Google has an 84 linux box cluster and they index about 4 billon sites with it. When i do a search, it looks at that, formats the results so they look nice..and gives them to me. Why does every single company that tries to compete put more into it?
I think we all know whats going to happen to this.
but the image isn't loaded everytime. Particularly if they return to google multiple times in one browsing session.
So the light entry page really does help google feel fast.