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Was the Yahoo-Google Deal a Ploy To Weaken Yahoo?
JagsLive writes with a link to a BetaNews story about a US Senator who is questioning whether the deal between Yahoo and Google was brokered with less than honorable intentions on Google's part. The advertising deal came under scrutiny from the Department of Justice recently for potential antitrust violations. The deal has now been delayed in order to allow investigators more time for evaluation. Meanwhile, rumors are circulating that Yahoo will cut as much as 20% of its workforce after an internal memo from CEO Jerry Yang called for "discipline" and said the company was "getting fit" for the long term. For their part, Google has launched a site endorsing the deal and attempting to smooth the way for its approval by providing facts and positive reactions from experts.
Notice how the DOJ only moves on anti-trust issues when the complaint is from a big corp (Microsoft).
Honestly.
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.
Feigned buyout intentions are used occasionally by unscrupulous business folks to damage competition. Here's a scenario used often (short version):
Potential buyer walk up to a company and says they would like to purchase it. The seller, who is interested says sure. After long negotiations, the buyer starts making demands for the deal to go through, such as: firing key employees because they "don't fit in the new company", canning key suppliers or not paying them on time to make the cash situation better, announcing to customers that there's a transaction going on, and other things to fuck up the company so that they will buy it - only under those conditions. Then, the buyer walks away. The seller is now pretty much fucked. It doesn't sound like anyone would fall for this, but after slow, very slow, negotiations for a while, and a strong desire by the seller to sell, it happens ever so slowly and after a while, the seller is afraid to bail because he's so far down the road, he keeps going along with the hopes of finishing.
BTW, not everyone can do this. You have to actually be someone who has the resources to do this. You or I walking up to a business, no matter how small, without any track record or business history will be ignored. It's usually done by competitors who want to knock out the competition. So, don't think you can wipe out the guy who screwed you on your WoW special edition throne.
Yes.
No
WOW, MS has loads of friends in lots of low places.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Shit! I dropped the keys to the Noshitmobile down the drain!
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
That really doesn't make much sense. Consider this:
- Yahoo tested Google's AdSense instead of their own ad system a while ago.
- Then they switched to AdSense.
Obviously, this means that the cut they got from AdSense was higher than what they got from their own ad system, because Google's ads are better/better targeted/people pay more for AdSense/whatever other reason.
Equally obviously, the people who run Yahoo's ad system aren't needed any more. So they get laid off. New positions will open at Google though.
In other words, Yahoo is making *more* money now than before. That's not what I'd typically call 'weakening' a company.
The drawbacks for Yahoo are the following:
- Google - its main competitor - is ALSO making more money now.
- They're dependent on their main competitor; given Google's history of mostly not being assholes, that's not as bad as being dependent on other companies though. Still, I'd call this the main drawback of the deal.
- Google now knows everything about Yahoo's audience. Since they have the largest search engine and the Google toolbar though, they probably already knew this before.
To wrap it up, I do not believe that this is weakening Yahoo.
I work at Yahoo at the Mission College campus. This article is about oh, 6 months too late? We at Yahoo already figured this out, months ago.
The day that Jerry betrayed us and announced that they were doing a "trial" test of Google ads was the nail in the coffin for most Yahoos. If you cede search and search advertising, you might as well ditch every sense of innovation and technology that the company has. And he did that. I mean, honestly, what else is there at Yahoo in terms of technology? Nothing, we become nothing more than AOL, a content provider.
In the conference call he had with search when they first announced the "experiment", he said "I want to thank you for all the hard work that you did, and it's because of all your hard work that it allows us to try this experiment." How ridiculous was this statement? It was disgusting and I guess he didn't realize how backhanded that statement was.
OF COURSE Google wants to keep Yahoo weak. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but at least a combined Yahoo-Microsoft would have had a chance to compete against Google and wrest some of that advertising space away, with Microsoft's deep pockets. Instead of fighting, which all the Yahoos wanted to do, we are just a bunch of snivelling bitches of Google now. By doing this, they prevented any decently sized competitor from being created, and they kept their two second-largest competitors separate and ununified. It was a brilliant move on Google's part.
The fact is, projects like Panama and Apex failed. But if we give up, Yahoo is basically nothing, except for a bunch of perl scripts and html pages. The only chance that Yahoo had to capture some glory was to make a compelling ad system so that we could take some market share away from Google. Now, by feeding off the teat of Google, there is NO WAY that we will ever be competitive. It was truly making a deal with the devil, to increase short term revenues, and to make their earnings numbers better to save their own asses. Next is to go completely with Google ads, and then after that next after that is to drop search altogether. Why bother? Might as well go all the way, and lay everyone in MC2 off.
Jerry Yang has completely bungled this company, and will unfortunately go down in Silicon Valley history as the worst non-fraudulent CEO ever, that ruined his own company with his own ineptitude. He should have made the deal with Microsoft. You could even tell on the devel-random list how the tone changed. Even the most die-hard Yahoos now realize what a shell of a company Yahoo has become, and are just waiting around, playing foosball and surfing the web, while we all away the great Layoff of 2008.
Other than furthering Google's market cap on internet advertising and pushing them closer to a practical monopoly (there will always be competition, but none that really competes on any large scale), is that really a problem? Yahoo's page views won't change at all, and chances are that $googleAdSenseRevenue > ($yahooAdSales - $yahooAdSalesOverhead - $yahooAdPayouts). If AdSense keeps the rest of the internet afloat, why should Yahoo have to feel left out?
Truth be told, having a "Google Custom Search" logo in the Yahoo search box might do a bit of harm to branding, but most of the people using Yahoo are using it as a home page (sports, weather, news) rather than primarily as a search engine. In my limited observations, at least. If Google made their iGoogle pages a bit more obvious, they could probably have Yahoo dead within a week.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Instituting keyword filters at the request of the Chinese government. Google's do no evil policy only applies to the U.S.
This argument is, and always will be, fucking retarded.
These are your only two options when dealing with China:
1) Play by their rules, begin to do business there, then once you're entrenched there begin to try to make changes.
2) Don't play by their rules, get blocked completely. A Chinese-owned search engine takes over and is completely in the pocket of the government and always will be.
That's it. Those are your only choices. Which is the better one for the people? If you think anything but the first, you're a fucking idiot.
Google to Yahoo is like Vlasic to Wal-Mart in your example. Google is the supplier, and Yahoo the distributor. Establishing a distribution channel is the hard part, so Wal-Mart had an upper hand to threaten the termination of the non-exclusive deal because that would significantly affect Vlasic the supplier by undercutting its product distribution.
Yahoo in the Google ads deal already has its own distribution channel and even its own supply of ads. Yahoo is more like Wal-Mart, who carries its own Sam's Club breakfast cereal in addition to well-known brands such as Kellogg's and Quaker.
I once had a signature.
since when truth became flamebait ?
the woman CONFESSED in front of a senate committee for god's sakes. she said 'i made a mistake'. they asked, how many times, she said FORTY.
leave aside being flamebait, this explains how big a joke department of justice is, and what motives it has for accusing google with undermining yahoo.
ill wake you up -> microsoft.
Read radical news here
Chrome is incredible at what it does (vastly speeds up code-heavy sites), Orkut is practically a way of life in Brazil and India, and Android phones aren't even out yet but Motorola is committing hundreds of people to developing on it because they love it so much. If those are the "worst" products you can pick out, then Google seems to be doing pretty well.