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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."
Yahoo owns both Inktomi and Overture... for them to be dumping Google and moving to the suppliers that they own outright is something that was easy to see coming, the only question was when.
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.
Google's search will be just as good as it's always been, 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.
Is complete horseshit especially when you can find other links. Take for instance this link.
Enjoy the reading fellow /.ers.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
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.
"...Yahoo will switch from Google to its own technology as early as the first quarter."
If Yahoo is going live with a search engine that soon, why haven't I seen a bot on my site (google page rank of 5, so not obscure) which looks Yahoo-ish? Anyone else spotted a bot you think might belong to yahoo?
Read reviews of shopping cart software
This will hurt Yahoo a lot more than it will hurt Google. Google's search technology is very advanced, once you weed through the garbage links. Yahoo, before they used Google technology, would usually take forever to find any relevant results. Yahoo will go back to being the search engine with huge name recognition and little effective use.
Yeah, I definately think that people at Yahoo should really rethink it's IPO if they're going to drop the only thing that makes it relevant. If they expect to float along with their cheesy messaging and other crapware they're in for big trouble.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
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
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.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
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.
Same post here yesterday.
Now go to your room!
"If I have been able to see so far, It is because I went out and bought a damn binoculars" - Ze da Esquina
Now I have to sort through page upon page of sites wanting to sell me said item,
Learn to search. Using a search engine properly is a little more than dumping a word into the tiny box.
Google offers pretty good advanced search options, which you can use to great effect to weed out the stuff you don't want, refine the search, offer alternative spellings or keywords, etc.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Wow, how did you find that, Google?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
"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
Yahoo! plans to dump Google as its primary search technology.
The word primary is very important here. It implies that Yahoo! is not completely abandoning Google, but is making it second string instead. If they're still letting us access Google, even if it requires a couple of extra clicks, then I can't see this as entirely bad. I like Google and it's my first pick, but I certainly don't limit myself to Google...
I did not see in the article where Yahoo! is completely dropping Google. If it's in there, I missed it.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
It's not any better than altavista used to be, back when people complained "When you search for things, you always get tons of useless crap"..
The only good thing about google is that it often lists the official page of something first. But if you aren't looking for the official page, you are out of luck..
Google became popular because it listed extremely relevant results directly on the first results page, but it is in my experience a completely different beast nowadays..
Will code a sig generator for food
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
Google makes great search appliances for networks.
Yes and no. Google's great strength is that it looks for links to a document as an indication of the quality of the document. In other words, it leverages evaluations of a document collectively made by humans. That works (or at least, worked) fabulously well for a most hand-written Internet, or in a case where someone familiar with the knowledge domain had written automated software to cross reference specific sections of it.
But what if there's nothing for PageRank to go on? What if you have 100,000 pre-Web documents in SGML/RTF/Word/FrameMaker, without any hyperlinking at all? Well, then all Google has to go on is keywords... it's "edge" evaporates.
Google's business is a commodity - what they have right now is a great brand and a solid (but not particularly spectacular) technology. When they have a technology that can do what Google Answers does, then it'll be safe for them to IPO, but not before.
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.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
It's true though, that this doesn't really affect the spidering aspect of Google's knowledge.
Yahoo users were still unable to find the "search" button at Yahoo.com among advertisements, sweepstakes offers, pretty buttons, news headlines, shopping categories, and about a hundred other annoyances.