5 More days to September....

Will Yahoo renew contracts with Google?

[born2drv]

Do you guys still think Fast has a chance? Or from all the testing and swapping that has been going around on the Yahoo SERPS lately, perhaps Google is in to stay? What do you think? :)

[Napoleon]

Evens Google
6-4 FAST
2-1 INK
4-1 A Combination of two of the above
50-1 Bar

All of course IMHO

[olias]

Ohh given those odds I'll take a bet on Altavista

[martin]

Brett, if Fast gets it can you post Successful site in 12 months with Fast alone? Thanks.

[Tor]

In my opinion Fast will get this deal with Yahoo! :)

[born2drv]

What about Wisenut? It is supposed to be fully integrated and operational with 4 billion pages in September....

I still give them 10,000:1 odds :)

[olias]

Maybe Gigablast... rapidly approaching 100,000,000 pages indexed

[martin]

Why should they part from Google. Google are great.

[nutsandbolts]

Google is the best - but perhaps FAST is much, much cheaper. FAST is a very good search engine though and Yahoo! needs to make more money so it may very well go with them...

[rfgdxm1]

My guess is that this will come down to comparative costs for Yahoo. How low in price is Google willing to go?

[chris_f]

I've got a horrible feeling in my stomache that FAST is going to it. Although, I haven't seen any FAST testing on Y!.

btw, barring Opera, does FAST have a toolbar?

Chris.

[chiyo]

IId go with born2drv. Given all the testing in the yahoo serps lately with Google listings, iid say the odds of staying with Google but in a more intergrated way has increased dramatically..

Iid go for:

1. Google results and rankings as default with relavant yahoo directory cats under each entry like google now does with ODP directory, but maybe more sophisticated. Whatever way, the directory link will be more obvious than ODP/Google dir results in Google at present.

2. If you are in the directory you get the yahoo title (as already is the case). Probably end up wth yahoo descriptions too.

Anyway thats my shot in the dark..

[gopi]

I echo chiyo's view ...

[Chris_R]

I'll take those odds on google if anyone wants to bet...

[Rugles]

I am thinking (and hoping) Google.

Yahoo would be foolish to jump off the Google bandwagon. People would slowly migrate away from Yahoo search to Googles website. Yahoo requires eyeballs to sell ads.
I think the folks at Yahoo realize this and whether they like it or not Google is the King of internet search.

[liquidstar]

I'll take Google straight up for $1,000 US so after the juice, I should be at $1,900 September 2nd.

Needless to say, I'm confident Google stays.

[startup]

The smart move would be to keep G. Rugles hit it, they need the "eye balls". I believe aol had to use G just to keep the "eye balls"

[Abrexa_UK]

Perhaps Yahoo's experimentation with placing their own descriptions over those provided by Google is a signal of change. If the results are going to be more "Yahoo" than their back up provider, then it doesn't make much difference who they use, as long as the results are relevant.

In fact, FAST's use of site descriptions rather than text snippets seems much closer to Yahoo's latest idea. Maybe they feel that Yahoo's users are less 'technical' than Google's and will appreciate the easier to understand descriptions?

[mayor]

Lack of much competition among major SE's hurts the big sites like Yahoo as much as it hurts the small ones like many of us.

I'll bet Yahoo goes with Fast if for no other reason than to level the playing field and keep from being held hostage by a near monopoly.

[Rugles]

Does Y not own a little chunk of Google?

I wonder how that affects the relationship.

[rcjordan]

>I'll bet Yahoo goes with Fast

I'm with mayor on this one, but for slightly different reasons. I keep putting myself in the CEO's place. This is no doubt a tough call... the short-term needs of quality search and -perhaps- revenue from google's adwords are very enticing. BUT, as CEO, can I afford to ignore the long-term consequences of continuing to build Google's brand and eventually building a competitor that will make permanent inroads on my user base? I tend to take my lumps early rather than postpone them, therefore I'd go with Fast.

[Grumpus]

People would slowly migrate away from Yahoo search to Googles website

That's what they said about AltaVista. Back in the day, AltaVista was about the only search engine you could get good results out of (if you knew how to properly format a search). Yahoo left AV and we see how of the seven people who eventually migrated over there to use AV search, 2 have moved to Google and 3 of them have died of EIS (Extended Irrelevancy Syndrome).

G.

[vik_c]

I agree with rcjordan. I'll also like to add;

Google has grown considerably in stature since the time the contract was first signed between Google and Yahoo. This contract has in many ways contributed to Google's amazing growth amongst several other things.

In some time Google could surpass Yahoo in terms of popularity and traffic. Yahoo might want to dump Google and partner with FAST because this will immediately affect Google's usage by the Yahoo buffs and make it tougher for them to surpass Yahoo.

If Yahoo doesn't do this, the next time the contract comes up for renewal, the question will be
'Will Google renew the contract with Yahoo?' The tail will be wagging the dog as Google comes out tops.

my 2 cents :)

[NeedScripts]

I don't know I am getting little bored today and just had a wild thought.

1) Yahoo signs up with Overture and shows PPC results.

2) In near feature Yahoo creates its own PPC program and gets all the clients from Overture using Yahoo - so Yahoo can have readymade client block

But again, this is just a wild thought - cuz, lately Yahoo is doing things to get more and more $$$$ and I think rather then paying someone, it would be good for them to take money from someone :)

[seth_wilde]

I think fast is out of the running..

I expect to see Google or Ink win the contract..

[mack]

I think and hope fast.

Fast provides the farest results. Google have to much ability to alter results, sometimes unfarely... Simply because fast doesn't use pagerank I feel the results are a lot more realistic in terms of relevancy.

[startup]

RC,
Using Fast creates another Google. This is one advantage Ink has over Fast. Yahoo does not want to create another competitor. After G the list should be Ink, Northern Light(I like going out on limbs) and just maybe IBM.

[Beachboy]

Agree with Rugles, but it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

[RBuzz]

Before Yahoo started all this weird display stuff, I would have bet money that they were going to cut Google loose. But now it looks like they're integrating even further with Google!

If they don't go with Google, I'm betting on FAST. FAST *needs* the kind of exposure backing up Yahoo would give them, and would probably cut a decent deal.

But I still say that Yahoo should take advantage of their current stock value. I mean no disrepect to Yahoo, but do you really think they're worth 6 billion dollars? Take that nice valuable stock and buy Ask Jeeves with their much lauded Teoma and their extremely clever toolbars (I really liked the Ask Jeeves toolbar, and I am *not* a toolbar fan.) Consider picking up Inktomi. Look into buying services that have an established base and would integrate nicely into Yahoo's offerings, like Blogger and QuickBrowse.

If CNET's rumor mill is true and Yahoo really offered $700 million to buy Google, then making a deal with an outside search engine is, imho, a copout. If they're willing to spend the money then not picking up Ask Jeeves is a huge missed opportunity.

Disclaimer: I own no stock, nobody tells me anything, and Terry Semel's a gazillionare and I'm not.

[rcjordan]

>Using Fast creates another Google

Not really, my strategy as Yahoo CEO would be to increase the public's awareness of Fast and break some of Google's market momentum. In the meanwhile, I'd be out looking for an engine I could buy and take the whole she-bang inside. The next time the contract came up, I'd be ready to pull the rug out from under everyone.

<added>
Heh! Nice post RBuzz. Beat me to the "buy somebody" part.