Posts tagged search
Did Yahoo shape the internet?
Mar 3rd
Yahoo! is celebrating its 15th birthday this week and it seems to be prompting a lot of talk about the internet, how it all got started and where it’s going. Did Yahoo start the internet?
Technology has fundamentally changed the way that marketers approach advertising. With the internet creating a new medium – digital – the marketing industry has changed forever, to which Yahoo was at the forefront.
Fifteen years ago, when Jerry Yang and David Filo had a lot of spare time on their hands, they decided that this internet thing was going to be a big deal and wanted to make it easier for people to navigate around.
When I think back to 15 years ago, I remember wondering what I’d ever need to know about the internet for. It was complicated and all scientific back then. Plus, the ‘www’ in my eyes stood for the ‘world wide wait’, I was impatient and would rather look up an encyclopedia than sit in front of an old IBM monitor listening to that terrible dial-up sound. My how things have changed.
Now there are 234 million websites, 200 billion spam emails per day, 126 million blogs and 27.3 million tweets per day. Yahoo alone has 600 million users, so I think a Happy Birthday is in order as just 15 years ago, there were only 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the internet.
There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25% of the world’s population.
In a blog posting, Yang and Filo wrote: “We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world…always trying to invent the future. Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world.”
It is worth remembering that Yahoo was the first major search engine to enjoy success in the early days of the internet – it was around before Google, yet we never said ‘I Yahooed it’. It was also one of the only internet companies to survive the dot.com bust, which consequently sent its shares soaring.
But by the very nature of the internet, the online world evolved which meant competition and when you come in at the top, there is only one place to go.
The huge lesson Yahoo has learnt in 15 years? Yang and Filo say: “Change and growth on the internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.”
Yes, the lesson was to accept competition, and a few years later, defeat. But never fear, Yahoo will be around for a while yet. It has teamed up with Microsoft to make sure of that and had made headlines this week after signing a deal with Twitter.
Yang and Filo conclude: “The internet still has enormous and untapped potential. There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.”
Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms agrees and has set the government a target of getting 7.5 million more people online by 2014 with up to £12m allocated to spend on digital social inclusion.
More info on how the internet has changed our lives from an interview with Yahoo.
Microsoft vs Google in a case of the pot calling the kettle black
Mar 1st
Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success, according to vice president and deputy general counsel of Microsoft Dave Heiner. So why is Microsoft verbally bashing Google out there in the media over antitrust and competition concerns?
It is a case of the pot calling the kettle black – and I will now share a Simpson episode to tell you why.
In season nine of the Simpsons (screened in 1998), an episode called ‘Das Bas’ saw Homer attracts the attention of Bill Gates when he starts his own internet company – Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net.
Here is some of the script that should illustrate Microsoft’s blatantly childish jealousy issues and the way the company is currently doing business:
GATES: Your internet ad was brought to my attention, but I can’t figure out what, if anything, CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet does, so rather than risk competing with you, I’ve decided simply to buy you out.
HOMER: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
GATES: Well everyone always does. Buy ‘em out, boys!
(Bill Gates companions begin to trash the “office”.)
HOMER: Hey, what the hell’s going on!
GATES: Oh, I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks!
Gates isn’t buying Homer’s company, he’s ‘trashing’ it – much the way, one could argue, that he is verbally trashing Google currently in the press.
Government competition agencies are increasingly focused on Google’s growing power in search and online advertising, according to Microsoft.
But don’t forget, government competition agencies have spent the past seven months investigating a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft that is thought to be ‘antitrust’ and ‘anticompetitive’ too.
Google is dominant in certain markets, including search advertising. Last year the DOJ told a federal court that Google’s book search plan is anticompetitive in several respects. (One big problem is that Google would help itself to essentially exclusive rights to tens of millions of books—effectively locking out everyone else.)
Last week, the European Commission said it was investigating various aspects of Google’s conduct, including claims of retaliation, exclusivity and manipulation of search results to disadvantage rivals. Google was reported by Ciao, a subsidiary of Microsoft.
On Microsoft’s blog today, it said, “Google’s public response to this growing regulatory concern has been to point elsewhere—at Microsoft.”
It says that Google is telling reporters that antitrust concerns about search are not real because some of the complaints come from one of its last remaining search competitors.
It’s worth asking whether Google’s response really addresses the concerns that have been raised. I’ve asked Google and I waiting to hear back…but will the search giant even dignify such allegations and join this childish fight?
When the Yahoo and Microsoft partnership was approved last month, many were singing the praises of the pair. Others, myself included, said that while it is good for competition, the pair have quite the task ahead of them if they are going to get consumers and advertisers to migrate away from Google (a brand they have stuck by for over ten years). How will they do it? I pondered.
Bashing, it seems. But Microsoft maintains that it is not alone in trying this business tactic:
Heiner says: “Complaints in competition law cases usually come from competitors. (I’ve seen plenty of competitor complaints. Novell, when current Google CEO Eric Schmidt was at the helm, was never hesitant about complaining to regulators about Microsoft. Google hasn’t been shy about raising antitrust concerns about Microsoft in the last few years, either.)
“This is the way that competition law agencies function: They look to competitors in the first instance to understand how particular markets operate, the practices of dominant firms and the competitive significance of those practices.
“Of course, as we have always said, it is vitally important that competition law authorities also listen to and assess the views of customers, business partners and everyone else affected by a dominant player’s business practices. Ultimately what’s important is not who is complaining, but whether or not the challenged practices are anticompetitive.”
Is Google anticompetitive? Or just too big to touch?
Publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies and others want to see real competition in search and online advertising, says Microsoft.
But if that is provided, what guarantees that people will switch?
Can Microsoft and Yahoo knock Google off its throne?
Feb 19th
Steve Ballmer has described the approved partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo as a “milestone”, while Carol Bartz claims it to be a “breakthrough”. But why is this ‘alliance’ so significant?
The decision has been resting on the shoulders of the US Department of Justice and the European Commission for the past seven months. Japan, Korea and Taiwan are still yet to approve what will surely be a threat to Google’s ten year reign over the search market.
Google, which has a 85.78% share of the global search market, has sat on its throne quite comfortably this past decade as every competitor that has entered the market has still failed to even make a dent in Google’s audience. However, with a combined market share of almost 10%, Yahoo and Bing are proving serious in their bid for leadership of the search world.
Both CEO’s Bartz and Ballmer suggest the ‘alliance’ is a bid to boost innovation. More simply, it’s about creating more competition and boosting revenues.
The global search market is estimated to be worth around $33 billion. In the US alone it is said to be $4 billion and in the UK, marketers spent £1.75 billion in 2009 alone.
Yahoo is hoping to see some of that spend on its bottom line next year – it will be taking 88% of all search revenue generated from its partnership with Microsoft.
The question on everyone lips now is just how long will it take the pair to increase their share.
The deal will not be implemented straight away. In fact, it will take almost until the end of this year to know whether or not the alliance has been a success.
One thing we can be sure of though, is that it will certainly force Google to rethink its strategy (namely its Adwords platform which has in the past gathered criticism) and also keep it on its toes to innovate and offer bespoke offerings (not like Buzz!).
Poor Google. If you come in at the top there is only one place to go.
But Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight, writing for UTalkMarketing.com, is not convinced that Google’s grip on the search market will be strained.
He says that the idea that a Yahoo/Bing merger will create a search player with close to 30% market share (as quoted in AdAge) might be accurate for the US, but not in the UK – or western Europe for that matter.
Google is simply too big. But then again, isn’t what they said about all those banks that went bust (too big to fail)?
The big challenge now, however, is tempting away loyal Google users who have, for the past ten years, used little else when it comes to search.
Google wants to be your broadband provider. And sell more ads.
Feb 11th
Imagine downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Universal, ultra high-speed internet access will make all this and more possible – says Google.
The search engine giant has today made a bid to launch its own high-speed broadband network.
Search engine + email + phone handsets + social sites + broadband = world domination.
Just kidding. But Google really is every where, isn’t it? Mmmm, everywhere except China. But never mind that. Google’s latest venture is only launching as a trial in the US, for now.
Should it succeed, it will be able to gather yet more customer information from its broadband network and target users better with ads. There really is no escaping.
But aside from that, you have to hand it to Google. They’re are doing an excellent job at remaining in the hearts and minds of customers.
Remember a few years ago when Pay TV companies were launching triple-play packages and they would sell you broadband internet , mobile and fixed line plans and satellite TV and you’d pay for it all in one bill? Well I see Google heading down a rut e that is much the same. It’s streamlining digital communication and making itself a one-stop shop.
That should make things easier for advertisers too. They will be able to send one consistent brand message through a range of different digital channels while only having to deal with one provider/host. Maybe they’ll get a package deal too – say some search ads, some video ads on YouTube, a profile on Buzz and maybe throw in a display ad here or there for free.
In a statement on its blog, Google said, “We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make internet access better and faster for everyone.”
The search giant also lists a number of specific features it has in mind. Here they are:
Next generation apps
Google wants to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it be creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses not even it can yet imagine.
New deployment techniques
Google will test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere.
Openness and choice
Google plans to operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers.
Although, for now, Google says that the initial purpose of the project is to “experiment and learn”.
Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there’s still more to be done – and Google is the King that has the money to do it.
Yahoo! is coming back to life with display ads up 26%
Jan 27th
Yahoo!, the search engine that we all thought would pack it in just one year ago, has emerged from 2009 victorious with revenues up 10%. How did it come back from the brink?
Yahoo! has reported its fifth straight quarter of falling revenue, but the world’s third most popular search engine did see profits rise as the online advertising market began to show signs of life.
Revenue from display ads such as banners, which are core to Yahoo’s business, climbed 26% over the previous quarter. Online search ads, ticked up 4% – the first increase since the third quarter of 2008.
The results were far from Google’s 17% jump in revenue and a more than 400 percent surge in profits last week. However, Yahoo!’s income is up totaling £93 million, up from a £187 million loss in 2008.
Fourth-quarter revenue was £1 billion, down 4% from a year ago, but up 10% from the previous quarter.
Carol Bartz, the ambitious CEO of Yahoo who took the reins exactly one year ago implemented a wide-ranging company restructure, said that she was now confident about the state of the online ad business.
She said, “Overall, things seem to be returning to a more normal state in the online ad business. These results are not just the result of an improving economic climate. These are the direct result of hard work that culminated in Q4 and will continue into 2010.”
But Yahoo!’s problems predate the economic downturn and online advertising rut. The company has been bleeding traffic to Google and social networking sites such as Facebook and continues to do so.
In December, Yahoo held 17.3% of the search market in the US, down 0.2% from the previous month, according to comScore’s latest figures. Google and Microsoft’s Bing search tool both continue to gain share, controlling 65.7% and 10.7%, respectively.
Bartz has received praise in light of the latest earnings figures, with some observers hailing her $100 million branding campaign that launched last year a massive success. She has also been accredited with the successful deal to outsource Yahoo’s core search engine technology to Microsoft.
Bartz added, “The fourth quarter marked a strong finish to 2009, which was a transformative year for Yahoo!. Our business has positive momentum and we feel good as we head into 2010.”
Also over the past quarter, Yahoo! launched Ad Interest Manager, which aims to take transparency in online advertising to a new level by providing significantly greater control over users’ interactions with interest-based advertising to improve personal relevance and build trust.
Is Baidu the real reason why Google wants to leave China?
Jan 13th
Google can never be number one in China, but it can stay number one in the West – where is needs to now focus its concentration given the rise of rival Microsoft.
Baidu is pretty much putting it to Google. The Beijing-based search engine dominates in China and has a market share of 77%. Google’s share is a mere 17%.
Is Google using the recent cyber attacks as an excuse to pull out of a market where it knows it can never be number one?
Baidu boasts more than 740 million web pages, 80 million images and 10 million multimedia files. By comparison, Google has more than one trillion web pages and billions of images. So what’s the cause of this disparity?
Google came to the Chinese market in 2006 (selling a stake it owned in Baidu tp pursue its own agenda). Baidu has been around since 2000. That’s a lot of time to get a head start, especially when Google is continuing to struggle with the Chinese government regulations.
The search engine king stated in 2008 that it was aiming to expand in China as the economy was booming and many western brands looked to cash in. But over the past year, its efforts have been hindered by censorship and Chinese loyalty as well as the effects of the worldwide financial crisis.
Its ambitions in China, though, go beyond the traditional online advertising and search – the company is still believed to be looking for multiple ways to introduce its Android platform in the region, despite the fact that Baidu has teamed up with China Mobile in a bid to also capture the mobile internet market.
How Google fares in China now will tell us a lot about what the company is made of since it is one of the few places where it will need to fight from behind rather than defend from the top. But has it lost its drive and patience for the Chinese market?
These recent cyber attacks certainly aren’t the first the search engine has encountered. Google’s Gmail went down for several hours last year in three separate major service disruptions.
The outages prompted commentators to suggest that users may soon switch to Microsoft’s new Bing.
And therein lies my point, Google has bigger problems than competing with Baidu in China. Its main focus at the moment is protecting its market share in the west and its leading position over both Yahoo and Microsoft.
It has already spent the last six months bolstering its advertising efforts, launching its first global advertising campaign, and ensuring new revenues by entering the mobile phone and consumer markets. It has also investing heavily in improving its search business for advertisers.
China is simply not the search giant’s highest priority at this point – a time of heavy competition in search. And it wouldn’t be unreasonable to hypothesize that Google is using the recent hackings in China as a cover to get out of a market where it knows it can never dominate.
Mobile apps could threaten Google, Yahoo and Bing’s search future
Jan 7th
As the internet goes mobile, apps could be replacing the need for search
Applications that take users directly to e-commerce sites and other web service destinations threaten search providers such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing, according to BroadPoint AmTech.
Some retailers including Amazon and eBay are making it even easier for consumers to visit their site and make purchases by offering mobile apps that enable full browsing and purchasing functionality.
Consumers who download these mobile apps directly to their iPhones and other smartphones and can then go straight to the source website and buy what they need. So will the search box be a redundant feature of the internet in the future?
There are several opportunities to make money from pairing ads with search engines on smartphones and other mobile computing gadgets, but applications that take users directly to e-commerce sites and other web service destinations threaten search providers, says BroadPoint AmTech.
Mobile web search and queries are on the rise and will continue to soar once consumers begin to leverage more location-based mobile services. It’s no wonder Google swore its allegiance for the space by bidding $750 million for mobile ad maker AdMob.
BroadPoint AmTech said 10 to 30% of the mobile searches consumers trigger for Amazon.com, eBay and the like go through the Google, Yahoo or Bing search box on their iPhones, Google Android devices and other smartphones. Ads served with these navigational queries cultivate decent click-through rates.
But many vendors are making it even easier for consumers to visit their sites and make purchases and it isn’t just the big companies that are creating mobile apps to drive e-commerce to their websites.
This presents Google, Yahoo, Bing and other mobile search engine providers with an interesting quandary, or intriguing options, depending on how they choose to approach this new turf war.
These providers can secure search toolbar distribution deals with phone makers such as Apple and wireless carriers, grabbing the scraps from the tables of mobile app providers.
Or these internet companies can build their own mobile apps for prominent placement on smartphone decks. For example, Google has recently released two powerful apps, the Google Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS program and the Google Goggles visual search app.
Both are currently available only on Android. Google hasn’t discussed how it might make money from these free apps, but serving local ads with its GPS app and its visual search app seems to be such an intuitive task that it would be surprising if Google did not undertake it.
In any case, Google is headed in the right direction with the impending Nexus One smartphone, a fast-performing HTC device. The search giant seems to be focused on making sure it can guide the development of the mobile web while protecting and expanding its own business model.
Could other search companies follow suit to protect their online futures?
Google’s Nexus One marks a new era for search giant
Dec 14th
Can Google crack the handset market too?
Google has been forced to confirm that it is currently testing out its own branded mobile handsets after rumours surfaced on the internet over weekend. A rare but strategic move for Google…can it possibly pay off though?
Dubbed the ‘Nexus One’ and made by smartphone maker HTC, the phone will run on the search giant’s Android operating system and will be sold online, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal.
Looks like Google is desperately trying to cling to its market share and internet monopoly as in the past few months, the search engine giant has announced a number of new products as competition from tech giant Microsoft heats up.
But, can Google be everything to everyone?
It’s one thing to be a leader in search – an area where Google has established itself as one of the most enterprising, innovative and ‘cool’ brands of the decade. But will consumers follow the brand through to its new endeavors?
There is no doubt that Apple’s iPhone will have little competition over the next year or so. It’s virtually pushed Nokia out of the market as its profits and sales dipped dramatically this year. Even BalckBerry is suffering declines as consumers are wooed to Apple by its ‘wow’ factor.
However, Google’s Android phones have won attention in the mobile industry lately, with Motorola and Sony Ericsson choosing to launch it with their new top models.
But perhaps Google isn’t after ‘world domination’ with this new venture. Analysts have said that the company is aiming to gain access to valuable consumer data that can be used to sell ads at premium prices. So perhaps Google is just going that one step further to confirm it is still the King of search engine marketing.
Producing its own phone would be seen as competing with its partners and would represent a rare venture by Google. By the time January comes around (when the launch is predicted) we’ll have a much clearer explanation as to why Google has chosen to go down this route. For now though, it seems like the giant is just looking to stay ahead – by any means possible.
Facebook privacy tools launched. Now the backlash begins.
Dec 10th
Is Facebook really handing over control of privacy to its users? That’s the social network’s stance with the launch of new tools.
Users welcomed their new lease of empowerment with open arms but some quarters are verging on the side of caution claiming the move simply allows Google to wipe their hands of future problems.
“Let’s get one thing straight: Facebook is forcing users to choose their new privacy options to promote the Everyone update, and to clear itself of any potential wrongdoing going forward,” said Jason Kincaid on TechCrunch.
“If there is significant backlash against the social network, it can claim that users willingly made the choice to share their information with everyone.”
He adds, “That’s why there are all of these notifications informing users about what these privacy features do. And it’s why there’s now a Privacy Center.
“The vast majority of users will ignore this information the same way 80% of them have ignored privacy settings in the first place. But Facebook will still be able to claim that it did its best to get their informed consent.”
Kincaid’s claims have been backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“These new “privacy” changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.,” said the Foundation.
Kincaid went on to predict future problems with prospective employers stumbling over Facebook users’ potentially sensitive information.
He added that problems would be compounded when Facebook starts sharing status updates with the search engines and other third parties.
“Bing will be getting access to Facebook ‘Everyone’ status updates in early 2010. Google will only have access to Fan Pages at first, but don’t be surprised if they cough up the cash for access to the status updates too,” he wrote.
“In other words, if users do wind up sharing far more than they intended to, Facebook can’t do much to repair the damage.”
The bottom line. Will usage of the site diminish? Kincaid doesn’t predict this will happen.
But the private nature of the site – which made it popular in the first place – has now gone.
What Google’s ‘real time’ results will mean for SEO marketers
Dec 8th
Managing your brand reputation has never been so important.
Google has now added those ‘real time’ results it has been talking about all year, which means users will now see feeds from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other fresh content in their search results.
Google announced an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in their search results a couple of months ago saying that it believed their search results and user experience would greatly benefit from the inclusion of this “up-to-the-minute data”.
At the time, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer said, “In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.”
But what does this mean for SEO marketers and how will having someone’s Twitter feed or Facebook status in Google’s search results help users find what they are looking for?
Users will get results as they are being produced out there in the world wide web. Online social-networking rivals MySpace and Google will be providing feeds of all public updates made by users.
Google said on its blog, “Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.”
The search engine believes that this is an “important step in the evolution of information access”. And while that may be true in some instances, I can’t help thinking that having such results turn up in my search queries will be distracting and irrelevant.
On the other hand, it’s good news for marketers who have Facebook Fan Pages and those brands who Twitter. Just using the right key words will see you show up in those Google search results for free.
All sounds good in theory but marketers will have to be incredible diligent in not only what they are posting on social networks, but what their own customers are saying about them as their conversations are about to become a whole lot more visible.
Immediately after conducting a search, users will be able to see live updates from people on sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before.
When they are relevant, Google will rank the latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
The real-time search enables users to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening, even if it’s not the popular news of the day.
Users can however filter their results to see only ‘Updates’ from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices.
But marketers, while they may not be able to stop consumers saying not so nice things about their brands, can at least monitor what is being said about them more easily with a new ‘hot topics’ element to Google Trends that will show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time.
Since social media came about, companies and brands have been learning how to leverage it and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter. So in some ways Google is helping make this a bit easier.
But Google says it still has a way to go, “Search is still an unsolved problem and we’re committed to making it faster and easier for people to access a greater diversity of information, delivered in real-time, from across the web.”
This has me worried a lot about brand reputation, but may create some jobs in ‘reputation management’ I suppose. The advantage is, at least, that marketers will be able to listen into the conversation which could deliver a whole new world of insights for their brands and perhaps help them improve. The bottom line is, don’t annoy your customers or the whole of cyberspace will know about it one way or another.
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