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Everyone (especially the City Boyz :-) get very excited at the time but after all the legals, due diligence and strategy, the actual reality of the purchase in 12-18 months is a lot harder than management ever imagined.
If you look at what Yahoo! has done with Inktomi in the last six months e.g. not a lot, you won't see any of this come out of the wash till Christmas at the earliest.
I mean Google is still serving Yahoo! even though they are now quoted by Yahoo! (see Reuters press report - http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=3084443 ) as "archrival Google".
Contracts last longer than City Boyz plans especially as the market is so dire for everyone else.
However this will make 2004 an interesting year for everyone in Web Search.
I raise a Glass (Hic!) to never being bored in the last 7 years of this industry.
Are we going to merge the 3 forums as well?
How long do you think before MSN drops or does anything?
absolutely... i wonder which set of search results we will see Yahoo! using when they decide they are ready to ditch the google results... altavista or alltheweb?
I doubt that they will try and integrate the two technologies. I think they will use one or the other.
(still often confused between FAST and alltheweb.com: are they one and the same?)
With the business world's realization that search is currently the best advertising tool for the Internet medium, it will become more difficult (expensive) for us little guys to compete. Hopefully, smallness = nimbleness; and many of us will be able to continue to exploit our niches into the future.
IMO, the next untapped advertising area to be exploited will be affiliate marketing. We may be aware of this industry, but most others aren't. There's a lot of cleaning up and growing to do, but the potential is huge, and where there's money...
Hopefully, someone will come up with something again for the little guy soon.
(still often confused between FAST and alltheweb.com: are they one and the same?)
rmjvol
What will they do now?
Obviously they'll have Overture for PPC. They'll definitely ditch Google and use Ink, Fast & Altavista for their webpages.
They have positioned themselves as GIANTS now. Only Google can compete - can they?
Yahoo has been shamelessly copying stuff that Google has done (cache, Froogle) - so they don't mind doing that. With the additional stuff they bought, and the brand name - who can stop them?
Correct. At least that was the case until Overture bought the websearch division, including ATW.
The norwegian search technology comapny FAST Search & Transfer is a heavyweight in corporate search, but no longer the owner of ATW or active in the websearch biz at all.
Oh, I don't see Google being massively threatened by this move. I'm not sure about the US market, but the majority of searches is done from outside the US anyway.
Yahoo is not well positioned as worldwide player. There's only a handful of countries where they have any significant marketshare. They are only present in 20 countries.
They have positioned themselves as GIANTS now. Only Google can compete - can they?
roflmao - it was just last week when many were bemoaning Google-opoly [webmasterworld.com...]
Please remind me what has happened the past 4 years?
AFAIK just Google, Google, Google.....am I missing lots of fun and profit elsewhere?
Don't mention 2003, from the obvious demise of Google to Overture buying FAST, AV and now this.....
I apologize to the fanatic Google people here but this seals half of Google's coffin....
Tell me, with Yahoo looming why would you buy any Google stock whatsoever? Unless you're the "passion investor" what makes you think Google would do any better out on the public market than Y!?
Just buy YHOO as YHOO will gobble GOOG soon as it lights up on the board....
Outside the US, I would not be suprised if Google claims 75-80% of the search market by end year. If MSN would have their proprietary medium quality search, ready and built in with new browser/office updates in 2004, I'd say they'd be the only possible contender.
Yahoo looks like a dinasaur stumbling over its big appetite ;)
bolitto, those of us that we in this prior to June 2000, remember clearly when INK was in, more or less, the same position that Google is now (though they were NOT their own destination site, and they didn't have the largest ppc program on the net, nor the distribution, large advertiser base, etc.)
Ink had reach back then - all that part of Yahoo has is MSN now. It's 2003, 4 years ago = 1999. You could auto generate a TON of stuff & rank well across the board.
Back then, Excite was a *search engine* not a meta engine, and Iwon didn't exist.
Read the archives here & study some 'search engine history' lots of stuff has happened in the last 4 years - it always does ;)
Inktomi has always been good for me. I get excellent results in MSN using them, and it's only a yearly fee of $25 per URL. Best value around if you ask me.
But now with this Yahoo purchase i am really curious to see what will happen with the XML market.
By the way I have clients in LookSmart small business listing that generate miniscule traffic also.
EquityMind
Outside the US, I would not be suprised if Google claims 75-80% of the search market by end year.
I am far from an expert, but how much of that percentage is coming from Yahoo since Yahoo is using google's results?
Hard to tell, but I would estimate less than 5%.
how i miss those days!
i particularly miss 1996 and 1997
everything's just so different. maybe if you try to remember real closely how much stuff happened every month from 1996 to 1999 you'd understand why I say the past 4 years have been oh so booooring......
the first java applet, the first shockwave and flash movies, downloading midi songs(mp3 what?), infoseek daily updates, altavista weekly updates, lycos, FREE YAHOO!, AH HOW COULD I FORGET! netscape gold 2, then 3, then the almighty 4(comm) when IE 4.0 came in sweeping market share...then along comes 1999...
TILL BUT TODAY.....YAWN.....
And Google, the last monthly fun stuff, decides to stop their monthly update in favor of this....mess....
Now what's left? Pay per this, pay per that.....
Yeah right, something's gotta change, this Web is no fun :(
EDITED CUZ I FORGOT NETSCAPE(SIN!)
