Microsoft Yahoo: Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
Written by Stephen E. Arnold on his blog Beyond Search - here.
Hindsight is 20/20. Actually hindsight is what college professors do. I’m no academic, but I write “woulda, coulda, shoulda” reports now and then. These are easy to do. The facts are right there, and I can almost always develop a nifty timeline. With a bit of math magic, I can output “what if” results. I have even sold some of these spreadsheet fever reports to investment banks and rich people with more money than the average Roman patrician who is a pal of Augustus Caesar.
I thought about “woulda, coulda, shoulda” when I read the well written essay “Yahoo Should Have Sold Search to Microsoft”. You can read Henry Blodget’s analysis here. I liked Mr. Blodget’s argument. My thoughts shifted away from “woulda, coulda, shoulda” to “it is what it is”. I snagged a notepad and jotted down three “it is what it is” points.
First, the Yahoo search is a clunker in my opinion. Now I know there are some people who do work for me who love Yahoo search. I don’t like it at all. When the Cluuz.com front end is slapped on Yahoo, I like Yahoo a lot better. Why? Yahoo does not deliver useful results without including some clunkers in each hit list. Whatever Cluuz.com is doing, Yahoo becomes more useful to me.
Why doesn’t Yahoo improve its search? The company is trying to do too many things. No focus translates to search results that I avoid. Maybe I’m wrong, but when a tiny Canadian company can make Yahoo a lot better, I think the problem resides within the Yahoo search team. Bad management plus an aging search engines aren’t going to close the gap between Yahoo and Google. If Microsoft bought another clunker, it is what it is–a clunker.
Second, Microsoft is not making progress despite the reorganizations, the acquisitions, and the pay for traffic ploys. Why? Users have had a decade to get used to Google’s being “good enough”. Some people think Google’s great. I don’t. Much of Google’s success comes from having competitors who don’t know what to do to leapfrog Google. Instead of going for the jugular with privacy and usage tracking as the business end of a marketing sword, Microsoft has too many chiefs or cooks. Whatever these managers are, they are not able to respond to Google after years of trying. So if Microsoft buys Yahoo search what difference will it make? Not much. Google touches about two thirds of the searches in North America. Buying the aging Yahoo will be like the purchase of Fast Search, Powerset, and Ciao.com–too little too late. In short, it is what it is.
Third, I track 52 search vendors. I have a list of 300 or so companies competing in search and content processing. Know how many can compete with Google? Two. Why doesn’t Yahoo buy one of these outfits? Why doesn’t Microsoft? The answer is that neither company takes time from their busy meeting filled days to sit down and think about Google’s vulnerabilities, which technologies are able to out Google Google in some key area, and do a head-to-head analysis that considers significant issues, not older stuff like Fast Search’s number of customers or Yahoo’s nifty banner advertising system.
The “it is what it is” analysis is sorely needed at a number of companies, not just Microsoft or Yahoo. Google has been running free for a decade. Buying yesterday’s notions of great technology won’t do the job now or in the next six to nine months.
I agree with Mr. Blodget’s analysis, but I prefer the “it is what it is” approach. Getting real about Google is the first step toward a search response to Google.
Stephen Arnold, September 21, 2008
