I own shares in Yahoo! and developed the MetaMojo.com vertical search engine, which has a major personalization component in its raison d’etre, so take what I say with a grain of salt…
I think Yahoo! and MSN did something today that is both very surprising but long overdue: they conceded the race in search to Google, well sort.
Yahoo!
Yahoo! finally realized that its strength - unlike Google (and apparently Ask.com I guess) was not the algorithm, but rather - the data it has on people. True, Google has done a marvelous job of catching up to Yahoo! with the launch of Gmail, and acquisitons such as Feedburner. But, the fact is that Yahoo! has an advantage over Google before the searcher conducts even the search. The folks at Yahoo! seemed to have forgotten this, and tried to be Google instead of beating Google. Today Yahoo! put the emphasis on the right syllable: and that is of personalization. This is odd, mind you, because when I launched MetaMojo.com (first on Yahoo!’s own API in spring 2005) they did not seem to keen on personalization but rather mass market, cookie cutter, Google-esque search. I guess it took 2 years and a loss of 10%+ market share to realize that they should wage a new war in search.
Microsoft
After spending BILLIONS on MSN.com search/Live.com, today MSFT hinted that it was working on a new bionic and superhuman search engine. Great. Let’s see how this fares. We’ll keep comments when we see it.
One thing that is certain, is that between Powerset, Mahalo, Google’s new “we’re everything to everyone at all times” strategy, search is entering a brave new phase.
Very relevant to this is Yahoo!’s announcement that it launched an API for Panama for advertisers to ride.
Mind you, two major issues I had with Y! - as a shareholder and user of their API - was addressed today. Yippie: 2 years is all it took.
Anyway, one thing to note: when it launched the Yahoo! search API, developers and entrepreneurs like myself got excited, used it, but once they launched whatever it was they were planning to launch quickly looked for something else instead of the Yahoo! API. Let’s hope that they don’t fumble the ball with Panama’s API - which could prove far more lucrative than the Search API - like they did with search.
I’ll write some more on the Panama API later today.
Related:
:: 2020: US online ads = $100B and Google’s $375b market cap.
:: Will Google bypass MSFT in market cap by 2010.
:: Head to head: MetaMojo vs. the Other Search Engines
:: Google’s SOAP Search API Shutdown: A Lesson for Entrepreneurs
:: Yahoo!’s Credibility Problem with Geeks (or, why we stopped using Y!’s API, and they did not care)
:: Official Launch of Domain Specific, Vertical Search Engine MetaMojo.com
:: Google Borrows Page from MetaMojo.com (Really!)
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June 11th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
[…] Mojo Yahoo! and MSN Throw in Towel in Search, Pick New Fight — Froosh has an interesting take on how the 2nd and 3rd place search engines are looking for […]