Are Google And Yahoo Going To Split?
from the increasingly-competitive dept
SFGate has an article about how Google has grown up, saying that Yahoo! is now looking for ways to be less reliant on the company that, in some ways, they consider to be a competitor. This story has come up before, and I stand by what I've said in the past. If Yahoo sees Google as a "competitor", then they're making a strategic mistake. The people who stick with Yahoo seem to do so because it gives them a number of different services in one place, including a strong search engine. If they were to ditch that for a weaker search engine, they would end up driving people right into Google's arms. As it stands now, people know they can get the same search results and will keep using Yahoo's search (and other properties) allowing them to get more ad impressions. It's not as though Yahoo users don't know Google exists. Pretending it doesn't exist isn't going to make the searching experience any better. It's just going to make users less happy, and more likely to use Google directly.
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Probably true but...
Of course, the marketing side of it is trickier. The fact of the matter is Google is a competitor to Yahoo. (Though so was AltaVista). It really should come down to demographics--XX% of people will use Yahoo no matter what. XX% use Yahoo because it uses Google and would switch to Google. XX% would stick with Yahoo if the Google replacement is good enough and switch to Google if it weren't. Without really knowing what those percentages are, I don't know that you can really say whether it would be a good or bad decision.
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Re: Probably true but...
As for the %s, also a good point, but I was implying that I believe those percentages weigh heavily in favor of Yahoo sticking with Google.
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competitors
Thank you,
Chris Jeffery
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