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Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course
An anonymous reader writes "It's pretty clear from this analysis as to which company is ahead of the game. Take this simple comparison: at Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest. This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut. At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring)."
But at least those of us without 4.0 GPAs and PhD's can work there.
Google for Google. Google that Googles.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
"I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"
Can't they just do it, and get it over with. I'm starting to get tired of all the fuzz about them now a days.
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
Remember when Google said they weren't going to become a portal, and while they have tons of innovation, their 'personalized home page' and email service are starting to feel just like that. Are they just trying to avoid being 'tagged' as one thing and instead trying to retain their own personality? From what I've seen they've taken the leadership role from Yahoo years ago, so I wouldn't worry about anyone trying to piegeon-hole them; they are their own entity and a driving force for the Internet as a whole. Will be interesting to see what Google looks like in 10 years, heck, we'll be able to say "When I was a kid, Google was a search engine, that's it"
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
Doesn't take a whole lot of brain cells to grasp that.
Then again, ZDNet publishes Dvorak, so go figure...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Yahoo has been around for a long time. I used them as far back as 95ish. I can't remember when my.yahoo.com came along but I have been a long time user since. However, anyone remember the Denial of Service attacks back in ~2001(?), since then I have been using google, msn, jeeves, in fact all search engines as I was so ingrained into yahoo that I couldn't even search using other engines. But really, the search aspect is such a low priority now that I don't care what engine I use; the real draw of yahoo is the integration of my.yahoo. Google has just now started getting that integration but yahoo has done this for years. I don't think that google will be able to overcome that time/gap that yahoo had in creating it's service. In the long run I believe yahoo will win out.
First an idea factory... Next thing you know, yahoo!'s going to be putting up 'Let your imagination soar' posters in the break room. Revenue should double. But, if they really want do dominate the internet, yahoo is going to have to spring for the 'employees must wash hands' poster in the bathroom. While typhus and ringworm bring google to its knees, the clean handed geniuses at Yahoo! laugh all the way to the bank.
Google and Yahoo are much different companies today and part of working at either business means understanding really what each company is trying to do. Google is a technology company; Yahoo is now a media company. The biggest difference, however, is this:
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Google makes money by keeping people on their website for as short a time as possible. Yahoo makes money by keeping people on their website for as long as possible. The Internet traffic statistics are quite telling.
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=la
Can what is formed say to that who formed it, "Why have you made me thus?"
The risk is definitely there, but what you get from letting your employees go on seredipitous excursions once a week is potentially more valuable than profitable ideas: you get very happy employees. Google already has a rep for hiring only the best and brightest -- seems like they have a good way of holding on to them, as well.
Size of the entire internet man,
Usually kind to smaller man,
Google Man.
Yahoo Man, Yahoo Man,
Hit on the head with a frying pan,
lives his life in a garbage can.
Yahoo man.
Google Man and Yahoo Man,
Meet on the street in internet land,
They have a fight,
Google wins.
Google Man.
Choice is good.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What Yahoo still seems to be missing is that brand really matters. And brand is related to trust and doing the right thing by customers.
Take their Yahoo! music engine for example. A nice piece of software. But I, along with many I'd hope, are tired of downloading software to find it installs lots of other largely bugus but "required" junk. This is exactly the adware phenomenon that drives people nuts.
Of course, the Yahoo Music engine REQUIRES yahoo messenger to play music as a dependency (and no doubt will add more "requirements" in the future to increase revenue). Obviously, they saw a chance to push garbage that people wouldn't otherwise download.
In the end, this reflects on your brand. Either you are the company that respects my communication preferences, or you "update" them, and set them all to send me spam, and claim it is in enhancement (Yahoo).
Either you provide me with a cool music engine, or you "enhance" it with unrelated downloads.
Bottom line, many of us don't have the time or interest to sort out if we are going to get screwed over. The $6/month for the music engine is irrelevant actually for me, that is free. But the trust / hassle, and just being able to get what I want without tons of junk, that matters a lot.
If my mother, who is not as quickly able to uninstall stuff, downloads music engine, and then has messenger sitting forever in her taskbar, that sucks. Thankfully, I can tell her to download itunes, and she will have a clean and good experience. Neither she nor the queen of england want to be bothered with Yahoo! Messenger crap.
Pretty soon, folks like my mom, and myself, will trust Apple / Google, and when they release stuff, be happy to try it on the premise we are less likely to be screwed. Yahoo has a history in the other direction.
So I don't begrude Yahoo it's right to bundle a nice music engine with whatever other stuff it wants to load it with. I just don't
understand it. In the end, the company that develops products to deliver junk as its goal will fail to a company that developes a product that delivers what people want. I mean, are you putting
together a music service or not? If so, focus on the damn music part.
Long term I think this brand power will really matter, and Yahoo's history relative to Google put google in a good spot.
They need to open an office in Chicago
:-/
I'm in Chicago as well. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that Google Jobs has postings for a new office to be opening in Chicago! Don't believe me? Look here. I just hope you have a PHD in triplet if you want to apply.
(Actually, I think Google probably hires 99% of their people through reference or because they worked at other big tech companies. I did some research to see if they have ever hired anyone from the Job postings on their website and came up empty. It may be just because these things are not publicized, but my gut says that emailing to jobs@google.com is a pointless exercise.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What else would you use to promote innovation? Posters in the restroom? Inspirational speeches by top management? Innovation is about allowing your employees to have lots of ideas, trying them out, and be open to take the few that really work, making billions out of them. Sure, this process can be terribly inefficient and expensive if poorly managed, but Google is probably smarter than that. Also, innovation is about smart, creative people having time to think and having little fear to be wrong. When you give the opportunity to innovate to the top talent Google hires, you cannot help but go well beyond your competitors. Guaranteed.
I'm not saying they will not screw up the business side, and go under. I'm saying that, in the technical side, their setup is just perfect. I cannot think of a better way of building an innovation juggernaut.
I know everyone else already hammered you for this, but seriously Yahoo has innovated alot more things then Google has, and bought less companies as well. Google bought the underlying tech behind Google maps, google bought Orkut, and Blogger. So that leaves Google with Search engine (yahoo created theirs first), news (yahoo had this along time ago), personalized portal (yahoo first), web based email (yahoo first). Google may improve the wheel a little but they have not came out with many original ideas compared to Yahoo. Even this SMS stuff Google is getting into now, I remember back in 1998 I could have Yahoo send me news and weather alerts and what not on my cell phone. Yahoo became like MS for a while, in that it had no competition, so why innovate...but now that Google is giving a challenge, Yahoo is already starting to come up with a bunch of new stuff. Heck Yahoo has shown us some betas that improve search! Google's search has been stagnant for years now, and isnt that why we liked Google in the first place? Compare Yahoo and Google again in a few years... maybe if Google experienced a .com burst like Yahoo, it would be a little more conservative for a while too.