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."

Comments

Might be time to rethink that IPO?

[Josh Mast]

You're kidding me. I can't remember the last time I ever bothered using Yahoo!'s search function. It had to have been sometime back in '98 I'm sure.

Rethink their IPO?

[gpinzone]

Because of Yahoo? Nah. Google better rethink their IPO because their technology has been broken by spammers. Searching with google used to be a lot more fruitful in the old days. Anything searches that could be construed as porn or is sold on Amazon.com is going to yield tons of useless links.

searches, personalization, and privacy

[tuxette]

Second, Yahoo wants to combine personalization and customization features to extend the usefulness of searches.

It will be interesting to see what this develops into. I'm already a bit uncomfortable with the thought of such a "service." While it may be "convenient" to create a profile of your interests and perhaps an overview of previous searches and marking of what were "good" search results, I don't like the idea of Yahoo! storing all this data in the first place. How do I know that they won't sell this data to marketers? (Most privacy policies are bullshit.) Or give it to government officials looking for terrorists and political opponents and the such? Will I have to give up a lot of personal data in order to get search for information results that don't lead me to sites that try to sell me the product I'm trying to research?

Thanks, but for now I think I'll stick to spending time and effort to get the search results I want, no matter how big of a pain in the ass it is, rather than sell my soul for the same.

Impact on Google revenues & profits

[G4from128k]

"Might be time to rethink that IPO?"

You're kidding me. I can't remember the last time I ever bothered using Yahoo!'s search function.

The issue of Yahoo dumping Google has nothing to do with whether Yahoo sucks or not. Instead, this is an issue of Google's long-term business outlook. Google is partially dependent on large contracts from major portals like Yahoo and Google also faces the potential of losing to another search engine provider.

As wonderful as Google is now, it is in a very risky industry. The fact that search sites like Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite, etc. can go from darling to moribund suggests that the industry has high turnover. And then there is Microsoft which has expressed interest in competing with Google.

Were Google publically traded right now, this news would create a major hit to the stock price. This suggests that any potential buyers of Google IPO stock should think long and hard about the likelihood of expecting more unexpected bad news.