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Yahoo to Dump Google
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."
would probably be Inktomi's bot (something like inktomisearch.com). There was an earlier post about this transition being obvious since Yahoo owns Inktomi and Overture. So Inktomi would do the crawlin' and Overture would provide the paid results.
The only effective use Yahoo's search has is to lure people in with the aforementioned huge name recognition. Once people are there, I think Yahoo is more interested in getting them to do things like sign up for Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Personals, go into Yahoo Chat, click on paid links and outright advertisements, yadda yadda.
use google more creatively, by typing the name of your product and the word "review" or "consumer review"...
or check out the information about digital cameras on photo.net
Yahoo is the only site that I've found that really uses personalization. The "one login" promise that countless technologies were supposed to deliver on has been delivered by Yahoo. Forget LDAP and various XML schemes. I love Yahoo because no matter where I go in their empire, my login is good and the content is for me. I actually enjoy using Yahoo's various properties. In one day, I use their mail (excellent with spam), launch.com (streaming radio), their auctions, their weather, their finance, etc. I've been using the web since before the web, and Yahoo is the only place I've found that really delivers on that promise of personalization, which happens to be worth a lot to me because it saves me a lot of time and headache.
"the number of times it's used has no impact on how much knowledge it has about the web and what it does about it."
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.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I never really understood why Yahoo! switched to Google in the first place. The point is to differentiate. I stopped going to Yahoo! when I saw it was powered by Google - I just went to the "source". Same deal with MapQuest.
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.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
You know, I do the "review" thing too, and still get the same sorts of results -- possibly a different cross-section of them, but the same sorts of results, mostly due to the same reason, but also because every e-commerce engine under the sun seems to have a consumer review "feature." Look at this search for Canon ZR65MC review. As you can see, the results still contain the same sort of things. You also get (fairly useless to me, anyway) 10-20 different sites rebadging the pricegrabber or dealtime engines, providing the same exact content with a different HTML template.
I agree that Google needs to do something about e-commerce sites. Perhaps finalize the froogle 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 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, I've found they're still the best engine though.
Michael C. Hollinger
If someone found a way to abuse a search algorithm that you wrote to get better placement, wouldn't you change it too? Why do you think that this is all some scam to get advertising revenue? If you rely on search engine placement for traffic, you're accepting the risk that your placement might change.
You know how when you play risk... and you team up with one of your friends... you have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't get too strong? If he gets too strong he might turn around and start pillaging your homeland... so you have to remain friends as long as possible and then pick the right moment to invade him... feigned disgust notwithstanding.
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.
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