More Yahoo Crazy Math: Microsoft Yahoo Analytics

April 15, 2009

Silicon Alley Insider’s “Yahoo Could Save $1+ Billion per Year Outsourcing Search to Microsoft” was one of those Web write ups that went into my “Classics” folder. The author (Dan Frommer) summarized one of the pundits who analyzes the heck out of Web outfits. That analysis provided the fodder for this stallion of a column. The gist of the argument is that Yahoo could save money by paying Microsoft to run its search system. Yahoo has had a go at this. Before the meltdown or financial missteps of Fast Search & Transfer, Yahoo was relying on Fast Search and its data centers to provide support to the Yahoo search wizards and wizardettes, according to my sources. The financial pundit seized upon a similar idea, swapped out Fast Search for Microsoft, and presto we have a hot new angle on Yahoo.

What this story triggered in my mind were these thoughts:

Not much has changed at Yahoo in the search department. When a financial analyst realizes that Yahoo’s investment in search is sucking up its oxygen, it may be too late to resuscitate the purple beastie
Microsoft has plumbing, but I wonder if that plumbing can handle the demands of Yahoo’s spider which gobbles more of my Web site’s content than any other indexing system that hits it. With talk about chips as a solution to Microsoft’s performance problems, is this porting of Yahoo to the Microsoft infrastructure affordable, possible, practical, or even doable?
As Google’s share of the Web search market creeps toward 70 or 80 percent, Microsoft and Yahoo have to do more than team up. The companies–on their own or in some sort of tie up–have to leapfrog over Googzilla. A direct clash is likely to leave both Microsoft and Yahoo battered and not much better off than each company is at the present time.

In fact, the word “time” is interesting. I think “time” for Microsoft and Yahoo with regards to Google is running out. Quickly. In Web search.

Stephen Arnold, April 15, 2009

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business strategy, Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.