Nothing represents the changing of the guard as much as how the Big Three Portals have fallen from grace. Don’t get me wrong: from an operational standpoint, Yahoo! is a fine property, but that company is a bit of a… how do you say, disaster.
MSN is there, trecking along, costing MSFT billions in losses over the years without really making a push for #1. Sort of like all other MSFT products not named Windows or Office, basically.
Meanwhile, AOL is drifting along, buying up more and more assets - some smart, some not - but now putting itself up for sale. While the company sold a 5% stake of itself to Google for a $1B sum - valuing itself for a tidy $20B - word is that they might be content with a $15B offer… which means either Yahoo!, MSFT, News Corp., Comcast would show an interest.
While some will be quick to say the portals lost to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, make no mistake about it, they lost to search. Revenues matter, everything else is noise. Google has the web ecosystem by the balls, and considering that Google’s YouTube is more dominating in video than Google is in search - and that video is the next high growth opportunity after search’s decade - then you have to wonder how much more hurting Google can put on the Web.
When you consider how leadership is search helped Google propel itself to King of the Web, you sort of understand why MSFT just shelled out $100M for something that basically can be summed up as Wikipedia site search.
Subscribe:
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Another excellent analysis by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan.
How can I get in touch with Ashkan Karbasfrooshan by email to discuss a new clutter-less Internet business venture as the mighty fall?