Like many folks, James Fallows has never really “got” Yahoo or what it does, a curious reaction to a company as big and powerful as Yahoo. In an article for the New York Times, Fallows walks through the seeming hodge-podge of Yahoo properties and notes at the outset that Yahoo likes its far-flung businesses and doesn’t care to be easily characterized the way Amazon.com, eBay or even Google is. Moreover, while Google is always considered to be the chief rival of Yahoo, Yahoo isn’t trying to emulate Google.
…while Yahoo is ever conscious of Google and determined to match it head to head in familiar keyword search, in the long run its plans for search seem quite different from Google’s. The other is that Yahoo views the very scale and sprawl of its operations - the seemingly random assemblage of sites and functions, the 200 million active users in more than 20 countries - as a crucial competitive advantage.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:49 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Because of its far-reaching utility, Google makes a whole lot of industries nervous, according to a piece penned by Steve Lohr in Sunday’s New York Times. From Wal-Mart to Microsoft to BellSouth, Google’s central role in helping consumers search for goods and services puts Google in, well, just about everybody’s business.
And Google is pursuing, or at least investigating, just about every business it can.
As Google increasingly becomes the starting point for finding information and buying products and services, companies that even a year ago did not see themselves as competing with Google are beginning to view the company with some angst - mixed with admiration.
That latter point, namely that Google also sparks admiration amidst the fear, is a curious hallmark of the search giant. Despite its scary power, Google has done some pretty cool things, and has really delivered on the promise of the Internet.
Google is the realization of everything that we thought the Internet was going to be about but really wasn’t until Google,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:39 PM | Print | Comments (0)
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