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1. maintains its own subscriber base and revenues.
2. maintains Inktomi subscriber base and revenues.
3. jettisons Google affiliations.
This should provide Yahoo!/Inktomi with a commanding market share as search results providers while simultaneously reducing Google's share (while numbers vary, it should be in the 50% region and possibly higher for Yahoo!/Inktomi).
To do this Yahoo! must take care to:
1. appease the Yahoo! subscribers it has alienated over the past year with its new subscriber policy ($300./yearly)
2. create a strategy to enable payment from the older free listings in the directory from the earlier days of Yahoo!.
3. eliminate the Google integration with Yahoo! results which dilute the Yahoo! directory results and minimize subscriber's ROI.
4. provide secondary Inktomi results for Yahoo! searches which should increase Inktomi traffic.
5. maintain MSN as an Inktomi client.
A tall order but if Yahoo is successful it:
1. Provides an additional revenue stream to Yahoo! from Inktomi.
2. Will not disturb the lucrative Overture business.
3. Allows Yahoo! to jettison Google and any expenses associated with it.
4. Does not disturb the core directory business and may increase revenues.
5. Insures that Yahoo! will be a formidable foe if the portal battle with Google materializes.
With a good cash flow and a commanding presence in the search market, I see Yahoo! as able to comfortably control their own destiny. That combined with Google's current tendency to provide less than stellar search results and its reputation under insistent scrutiny, I see Yahoo taking an even bigger share in the months ahead.
(The conclusions of this post are based upon COMMERCIAL utilizations and experiences with the search engines and directories. Non-commercial factors probably would not provoke similar conclusions.)
Kinda scary, but the thought that they need to trump, or at least be on par with "G" is just the SEO talking...
