Yahoo! And Sbc Expand Alliance

yellow pages

[4crests]

SBC's Yellow Pages companies will sell advertising on Yahoo!® Yellow Pages.

[docs.yahoo.com...]

[Brett_Tabke]

Intresting in that it spells out "yellow pages" verbatim.

[Grumpus]

Last week, I predicted that within 6 months, the regular Yahoo! Directory, as we know it, would be no more. I predict that Yahoo! is heading out of the "web directory" biz and into the "ISP" biz to compete with the Biggies (AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Juno/Netzero, etc). My bet is that Yahoo either sells off their directory to be managed by another company or they sub out the "free listings" management so that they can focus on "paid listings".

Anyone got the line out of Vegas on this one? ;)

G.

[4crests]

"My bet is that Yahoo either sells off their directory to be managed by another company or they sub out the "free listings" management so that they can focus on "paid listings"

Betwee Yahoo including Google results and going PFI, they largely already qualify for this statement (ALMOST). All they have to do is get rid of remaining "Free" listings within Yahoo. It will be interesting to see what changes will arise when or if they drop Google.

[Grumpus]

My guess for the reason there hasn't been an announcement about where Yahoo! is gonna get their "Web Page" results is that there is still some heavy negotiating going on. I have a feeling that Y!'s ideal situation for this would be to have one company provide the "Page" results and "Directory" results - in such a way that Yahoo! can manage to make a few bucks off it.

I've noticed several deep crawls coming in from DEC (HP/Compaq) and IBM - both from Research Labs departments. It leaves me wondering if one (or both) are vying for the gig? Maybe not.

G.