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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.
google has a clean and fast interface, i dont want to load 10kb of bloat every time i enter a keyword to search for.
When's the last time you heard someone say "Yahoo! it!" as apposed to "Google It!"
-Rob
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.
...Google have a degree of mind-share now that Yahoo just won't be able to impact (realistically speaking). I realised the game was up when I was watching a rerun of "The West Wing" and one character told another to "do a google [search]". When your company name creeps into the language as a verb, you've basically won the battle for the foreseeable future. And yes, of course, marketing aside, searching with Google remains a far more rewarding experience than using Yahoo; less bloat and of course the superior technology behind it. Google works, its going to be hard to make me change.
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Before god created google, there was Yahoo!, and that wasn't too bad. Man was able to find interesting pages by drilling down through skillfully maintained categorical organization. Than Man created the computer and said, screw this, I can write a program that can do all this for me, leaving more time for Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters. Man said, I shall call my invention Google. In most portions of the Galaxy, Google has largely supplainted the more pedestrian Encyclopedia Yahoo!. In cases where there is a descrincy between the real world and Google, the fault lies in the real world.
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.
All search engines/technologies have their own purpose.
/.'ed.
If I am looking for a companies website and it isn't companywebsite.com, I would use yahoo and enter the company name. Once in a while It works for topic searches.
If I am doing a general search, I used to use Excite or Lycos. I have moved to google as my search engine of choice for a few reasons.
1. Google searches embedded formats (PDF, MSWord, Etc.)
2. Google is fast and clean
3. Free
4. Google has cached versions of pages for when a site has been
5. Google's rankings are not based on keywords but rather who links to the site.
6. Picture search
7. News search
8. Usenet search
9. Preferences for setting # of results p/page
Yahoo! has a long way to go despite the extra services they offer (chat, games, auctions).
#1 result for "search engine" in google: google.com
#2: yahoo.com
#1 result for "search engine" in yahoo: google.com
#2: yahoo.com
Have you ever used "View Source" on the google homepage? To shave bytes, they have used one-letter variable names and removed almost every nonessential space and newline. Take a look sometime, it's impressive (and confusing).
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
One simple reason why Google have taken the lead is the focus shown by Yahoo on making their ideas pay back a profit.
This policy has resulted in a switch of public opinion. People no longer want pages crammed with content covering every possible spectrum. The new generation of surfer can cope with the idea of a search engine, a news portal and a web-email provider on seperate sites, allowing them to choose the best of each.
It's a bit like asking a hi-fi enthusiast whether he prefers an integrated system or a seperate cd-player, amplifier and speakers.
The average surfer has grown up, and Yahoo has been left behind.
Just my thoughts...
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Unfortunately, Google's home page is still not W3C compliant. They don't put in a doctype, which is the first problem, and few of the HTML tag attributes are quoted, resulting in 53 HTML errors.
I'd be much happier if they added 100 bytes or so to the page to make it completely W3C-compliant -- it's not that hard to do, and it would make them have one more bragging right over Yahoo and the others.
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"googol" is the math term. "google" is an intentional mis-spelling of the math term.
And I never got the idea of "beat"les, I just figured Lennon was trying to be silly.
Schnapple