stories filed under: "search"
Yahoo's Earnings Weakness Starting To Get Old
from the yahoo? dept
It's no secret that Yahoo's performance has been pretty shabby of late, as it cost CEO Terry Semel his job. The company has tried to argue that its new Panama advertising platform would turn its performance around, but so there seems to be nothing doing. This evening, the company released its earnings, which look to be more of the same. Profits aren't growing and there's no sign that they'll grow anytime soon. To be fair to Jerry Yang, he does deserve some time to right the ship, but as one analyst put it, "This is growing old."Microsoft Acknowledges That There Are Other Search Engines Out There, Sort Of
from the ad-me dept
Last month, a much-hyped partnership between Salesforce.com and Google turned out to be a real snoozer, when it was revealed that the tie-up would simply offer Salesforce.com customers a better way to manage their AdWords campaigns. One aspect of the deal that was troubling was that it belied the myth that all these various web services are so easily mashed up. After all, why should Salesforce.com have to sign a deal with Google to offer AdWords management? Ideally, any company would be able to offer this functionality. Today, Microsoft announced enhancements to its own AdManager service, which allows users to manage advertising campaigns on Microsoft's search. Now, however, customers can buy ads for Live search and for Ask.com. It's really great that Microsoft is taking this big tent approach, acknowledging that there are other search engines out there that customers would like to buy ads on, but it's still missing a couple -- Google and Yahoo come to mind. Ultimately, if it wants AdManager to be a valuable service, then it should allow customers to manage as many different campaigns as they want, through any search engine. This piecemeal approach, allowing customers to buy ads on different Microsoft-approved sites, isn't going to get the company very far in its software plus services strategy.Is Microsoft Gaining Ground In The Search Wars?
from the maybe-a-little dept
A new report makes the surprising assertion that Microsoft is actually gaining ground in the search race and that in just the last couple of months it's significantly closed the gap with Yahoo for the #2 slot. Assuming the numbers are legitimate, this would be the first sign of life out of this business in quite a while. Still, it's hard to say whether Microsoft's momentum is real. The company is probably getting a moderate boost from the adoption of Vista and the new IE7, which has Live search set as a default. If you'll recall, this setting prompted Google to make an antitrust complaint against the company. The company has also been using other lures to get users, such as awarding points to certain searchers, which can be redeemed to purchase stuff from the company. None of this suggests that users are really switching from one site to another in significant numbers (which is what would be significant), though perhaps Microsoft is picking up a few marginal users that aren't particularly attached to one service or another. If true, Microsoft will probably hit a ceiling pretty quickly.
