Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Fights Back in Battle With Google
ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has a great analysis of how Yahoo is fighting back the Google assault. 'A handful of blog-evangelists, a couple of key buys - (Odd Post and Flickr) have turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes.' Yahoo's new initiatives like Yahoo 360 are even apprently making Yahoo Web 2.0 compliant."
"turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes"
Im sorry but you can not really call Yahoo a has been , it may not be the #1 anymore , and i wouldnt use it as its pages are too busy , but a has been ?
The site has a massive turnover , and it still one of the most popular sites for many reasons , Mail , messenger , Geocities and searching etc.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I was over on Google-owned Blogger.com the other day and reading a few of the blogs they've got listed there. It dawned on me as I read those blogs that what we are seeing here in the blogging format is a new form of media being created.
You're the first person EVER to have had that insight. Amazing! What will you do for your next trick?
I think Yahoo needs to stop counter-attacking and start inovating. Adding more widgets to their site and imitating Google's 1GB mailbox isn't winning anyone over who has the same on the other side. If they want to fight giants like Google, they need to take some risks of their own.
-----
Check out the Uncyclopedia.org :
The only wiki source for politically incorrect non-information about things like Kitten Huffing and Pong! the Movie !
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
Well yea, they are selling YOU to the advertisers.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Froogle hasn't changed in a long time. It still can't accurately pull prices out of many pages and coverage is spotty.
Google desktop search hasn't changed appreciably since it was released. Same with Deskbar.
Google News hasn't changed in a long time.
Come to think of it, I am struggling to think of a Google offering that has shown significant incremental improvement since being released. I guess when something is in perma-beta mode, people don't expect a v2.0.
Nevertheless I know a lot of people who feel like you about the big G. If anything it lends credence to the belief that Google enjoys a cult status; they can do no wrong in their faithful's eyes, and there are many faithful.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
That's besides the point. Anyone who wants to use WordPress or whatever on Yahoo already can - MySQL, PHP, Perl, whatever. I have web hosting up the whazoo - and I'm still looking forward to trying Yahoo's blogging when it's released. The beauty is going to be the rich integration of blogs into all the other services that they offer - and the scope of the virtual communities that they're trying to build.
Previous virtual communities were based around topics that people had in common - look at LiveJournal. But if you read their press releases and look at the clipart - what Yahoo seem to be doing here is starting at a much more personal scale. It's trying to get you, your mom and your real-life friends all reading and sharing blogs.
And the greatness of something like WordPress doesn't matter if it's a completely standalone system (which is hard to use, nobody has a log in, etc, etc). I think they'll do for Blogs what Geocities did for personal websites - take them mainstream and make them more popular than ever before. The blog is to 2005 what the personal homepage was to 1995.
Sure - the quality of most of them is going to suck, the "long tail" majority will never attract any real traffic, but only friends of the people that made them will be reading, so it should be worthwhile for all involved.
When your customer demographic is Joe Q. Internet-user, linux support is not a priority.
That's... some pretty complicated plans.
I wonder if it ever occurred to them to just make a better website?
...
Nah, probably not.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
These companies can battle until their blue in the face. It really doesn't matter, they're just taking turns one-upping each other in the most insignificant ways possible. It would be like pepsi and coke battling each other by making their bottles larger, 1/100000th of an ounce at a time. Sorry if this angers anyone, but even Google's great search technology has become dated. It's the "IE won the battle" syndrome. Since no one else has closed in on their domination, they haven't really bothered fine-tuning, or completely refactoring, their search algorithms since days long ago. Although Yahoo gave up on trying to offer a good search years before Google even got started. All I'm saying is that I wish they'd start competing by offering truly significant innovations. "It's like normal e-mail, but with more space!" isn't really innovative (beyond the initial "Wow!" factor). Try something like a 100% standards compliant web browser with native in SVG support, and an XML parser. I'm the first to say that Google is ahead of the game, but the problem is the game is penny-ante.
It's referring to the fact that everybody loves the underdog (e.g. Google, Red Sox) and everybody hates the established monolith (e.g. Yahoo, Yankees).
Whilst i agree your point is valid , You ruin it with a Fake Sig
By almost every financial metric Yahoo! is actually doing better than Google. I wish I could be that kind of "has been."
That said, Google does what it does better.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
It's not FREE (as in beer) !
Compare withg the biggest French ISP where you get what I describe for free...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Yahoo is now managed by the marketing and business people; Google continues to be run by the engineers.
Yahoo seems to be overfocusing on 'monetizing' every part of their portal (eg, IMvironments, annoying interrupting ads in Yahoo groups, etc etc) compared to Google which focuses on technical innovation first, capitalization later through quality (Adwords) rather than intentional forcing of it.
Until this fundamental management difference is overcome, Yahoo's corporate culture will be counter productive to competing with Google directly.
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Most of what comes out of the mouths of educated professionals is either incorrect, biased, boring or all three. Taking it "down a level" to the average Joe seems torturous.
Podcasting sounded interesting so I downloaded one that was acclaimed as "one of the few worth downloading!" on some site. It was just a college kid who rambles on for literally an hour every (day? week?) about what he's doing (like, "I ate dinner with Mike last night."), its like who gives a shit? Surely this isn't what Blogging is all about? 99% of it can't just be people typing "I took a dump yesterday, and it was a floater. Um. I like sausage pizza. Um.". What am I missing?
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Having advertised consulting services on both Overture and Google, I can say that while Overture ads cost more per click, they deliver more value per dollar. I don't know if this is because I'm selling somthing business related and overture is better for that, or if it's because of somthing else.
My 2c.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
- Their front web page is less cluttered than my dorm room.
- Their products aren't full of annoyingly intrusive ads.
- Their search results are as good as Google's.
- They offer anything truly unique on the Web.
- They make me feel like I'm using a useful tool, rather than like I'm part of some kind of e-commerce experiment.
So is any other site that carries advertising, including slashdot and google, to a greater or lesser extent
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I think that Google's perception is slowly changing among the Slashdot crowd, search results are less and less useful as they are beeing abused by spam indexing and Google's betas take forever (gmail and google news for instance).
;)
Google is still "cool" and "not evil" but I strongly believe they need to react quickly against this trend.
Preception is reality !! I am among people who think that Slashdot has been determinent in Google's launch and popularity. Hey people from Google are you listening ? you need to listen to Slashdot (small but vocal an influential minority and do something before it's too late !) please do something extraordinary and incredibly cool to amaze us again
I don't think Yahoo! has ever been a dot.has.been. Yahoo! is such a large company that they are perceived as a somewhat faceless corporate behemoth (at least among techies). Google, on the other hand is perceived as a more nimble, dynamic and adaptable company. Google is, of course, much smaller than Yahoo!, but still quite a large company (1900+ employees).
For techie folks who follow the Yahoo! bloggers, that "faceless" perception of Yahoo! is changing I think. Ironically, Google is beginning to appear a bit like a faceless corporation in the way they present themselves on the Web. Anyone who reads Google's official blog can't fail to notice how phoney and vapid it sometimes seems. As if each entry that's been posted has been run through a "press-release" language filter (I wonder if every entry is vetted before being posted). The other aspect is their secrecy - this is understandable to an extent. For me, the problem lies with their purchase of Blogger - I wish they would give some hint of what they plan to do with the service. Nothing has been announced or information given on the direction of the service - meanwhile, other companies like Six Apart are forging ahead with new features and growing mindshare. Now, Yahoo! is jumping into the fray with their imminent launch of Yahoo! 360.
I really dislike the new re-design of Google groups. I'm sure they must have done some user-testing on this, but it just seems like a leap backwards in many respects from their previous design.
Finally, I'm sure that Google remains the default search for many people, but I have noticed that other search engines like Alltheweb and Yahoo! Search often give comparable results. I don't think one can say (with as much certainty as in the past) that Google always provides the best search results. As an example, compare a search for the terms Open Source Usability on Google, Yahoo! and AlltheWeb. Not much to choose between them.
Because I don't want the whole GNOME libs to run a single specific application?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
As a matter of fact, GDS has had a new release which has:
".com Pundits" like Om Malik still startle me with how they manage to think they are relevant. I have to wonder if submissions like this are PR agents for Om. He writes some pithy obvious sort of column every few months and gets a few hyperlinks for it, yet to read his bio it sounds like he is a god of the
Yeah, uh huh. They have these registered users because SBC Yahoo customers have no choice. Either you register, or you don't get your DSL service. Yahoo also hosts online stores and offers online games (simple ones), but you have to register to use them.
I'm not exactly sure what Yahoo does, and I don't think they are either. But I do know that Google is the world's best Internet search engine, and by a long shot. I know that when companies have thousands or millions of documents, and they want to share them with the public, they hire Google, not Yahoo, to provide the search technology.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
That is changing with Linux OSes becomming easier to use.
Whether Linux OSes become easier to use is not the point. Are they popular enough to make it worth the time investment?
-mkb
Google News hasn't changed in a long time.
The "Customize this page" thingy is rather new.
-mkb
Now why do you think that Blogging is the new media?
I think you'll find the same thing in a newspaper on the editorial page.
I would like someone to prove me wrong, but most blogs are just copies of what people agree with or are limited in their world view.
If blogs were truly a new media they would be more comprehensive rather then a collection of links to other clone blogs (clogs).
Yahoo already offers it, but not for free. Now, if Yahoo Geocities (free) offered PHP and mySQL, and didn't adopt that agressive ad policy that Lycos UK had, they'd win some brownie points.
Why should I even worry about Yahoo offering any of this? I already have webhosting and a domain name with thePlanet connectivity. Lycos UK and Geocities sucked when I was stuck with them.
Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
Can someone tell me what "Web 2.0 compliant". Whatever it is "Web 2.0" sounds really big, and I want to know the details. I googled for the phrase and found nothing (google musn't have indexed the slashdot index recently). The term compliant leads me to believe there's an RFC or something out there I can look through. Does anyone have links to any info?
I have yet to figure out what mapquest/yahoo thinks US Route 1 (a major transportation route in my part of the country) is called.
From my experience with Mapquest in NJ, it will almost always use numbers (and only numbers) when they exist. This includes US, State, and County roads.
It's a little frustrating because county designations are rarely used by people in most areas. Luckily, they are required to be on the signs. There are also some state designations that have fallen by the wayside in everyday use, but are still on the books, so Mapquest uses them.
Yes, there are counter-examples to what I've just said. Note the words "almost always", "most" and "some".