Yahoo: Slipping and Dipping
January 11, 2009
I have deep skepticism about third party data. Nevertheless, when reports about Web site traffic and online advertising share appear, the data get snapped up the way Tess goes for a dropped chicken wing. Silicon Alley Insider’s “Yahoo’s Share of All Search Advertisers Drops 36% in QY (YHOO)” is worth reading. You can find the story and the scary red line here. Let’s assume the data are accurate. Bad news for Yahoo. Let’s assume the data are off a tad, say, down 18 percent in Q4. Slightly less bad news. If the Yahooligans continue to slip, the GOOG benefits. Yahoo started as a directory, became a portal, and then floundered. Like a person overboard in the Arctic waters off Nordkaap, even a strong swimmer succumbs. A weak swimmer, well, not much chance. Yahoo is now in the Arctic waters.
Stephen Arnold, January 11, 2009
Microsoft and Yahoo: On Again
January 9, 2009
Sitting at the eye doctor with my trusty Kindle (ruining my eyes, I know) I read “Ballmer Says Now Is time for Yahoo Search Deal” on the CNBC Web site here. Yahoo is not going anywhere. The CEO void remains. The Yahoo stock is in the run off stream from Old Faithful. If the CNBC report is true, the cyclic eruption of interest in Yahoo search is again visible. For me, the most interesting remark in the article was:
“We had a deal on the table that they didn’t choose to take, but I still think that makes sense,” Ballmer told the FT. “For us, the value to the customer, the value to the advertiser, all gets created around the search partnership.”
Since that time, Microsoft has lost Web search share as Yahoo treads water. Google continues to lead by a wide margin in the Web search NASCAR race. In my opinion, the Google vehicle is a tuned 2008 build. The Microsoft and Yahoo search systems are more like 1998 Chevrolets.
The deal may “save” Yahoo or deliver much needed emergency life support. But the Web search gap between Microsoft and Yahoo combined is too great to close with this deal. A leap frog play is needed. If this alleged deal goes through, I don’t think there will be a substantive change in Web search. Google, despite its numerous faults, remains more focused on search and its infrastructure. Microsoft and Yahoo have to catch up with today’s Google. Google is now leveraging its infrastructure to attack new markets. More is going to be needed to deal with the Google.
Stephen Arnold, January 9, 2009
Microsoft Fast: Stricken from the Mercury News List
December 27, 2008
When I lived in plastic fantastic (that’s Silicon Valley), I enjoyed the computer ads and some of the technical news coverage in the San Jose Mercury News. In flicking through my newreader’s daily treasure trove, I noticed “In Hindsight’s year in Review: Microhoo, Epic Change and an Economy in Crisis” by Frank Michael Russell. Microsoft did get the top billing in this month by month round up of what was important for the northern California region. There was one omission, however. In the month of October 2008, Mr. Russell neglected to mention the police raid at Microsoft Fast’s office in Oslo, Norway. I know that New York has a well deserved reputation for myopia. With Microsoft such a large factor in Mr. Russell’s write up, I was curious why a police action which have a profound impact on the company’s enterprise fortunes was ignored. Oh, now I remember. Folks in northern California don’t pay much attention to Oslo. Gas prices are more significant in the Valley of Heart’s Desire, which I think is a synonym for plastic fantastic. Google rated a couple of mentions. That’s encouraging.
Stephen Arnold, December 27, 2008
Yahoo’s Four Issues
December 26, 2008
TheStreet.com ran Eric Jackson’s “Reasons behind Yahoo’s Four Year Slump” here. Mr. Jackson does a good job of summarizing the received wisdom about the company’s challenges. Few can disagree that Yahoo’s leadership has been uninspired. Mr. Jackson moves quickly to identify product leadership leadership and the company’s organizational structure challenges. I wanted to add several observations that, in my opinion, also contribute to the company’s singular lack of effectuality:
First, the Yahoo technology generates one offs. News releases accompany these initiatives. That’s great for the public relations company and for the developers who hop on the Yahoo bandwagon. Build Your Own Search is a good example. Yahoo makes it easy for search developers to piggyback on Yahoo’s Web index. The excitement is certainly due to Yahoo’s making this service available without charge. Google offers some free searching too, but from what I hear the GOOG is quick to contact those developers who come to Google’s attention. Fees are never far from Googzilla’s mind. My point is that monetization does not seem to be a top priority at Yahoo. In today’s business environment, I think that is an issue.
Second, over the years Yahoo has acquired a wide range of companies. Based on the information I have, Yahoo had been content to let these outfits chug along. Yahoo was on the portal path when the GOOG decided to focus on search and seek inspiration from the Overture paid search service. The GOOG, whether by luck or input from former Altavista.com engineers, created a relatively homogeneous computing infrastructure. Not the Yahooligans. After collection companies, some of these outfits operated as services available within a portal, portlets, if you will. Instead of integrating acquisitions into a homogeneous platform, Yahoo has a more heterogeneous infrastructure. As a result, agility and cost control are difficult, if not impossible, for Yahoo to deliver on a daily basis.
Third, Yahoo has managed to create the internal environment that preceded the Pan Slavic initiatives of the last century. One the surface, Yahooligans get along and love one another. In the day to day dealings, I have heard that the sweetness and light dissipates. With cultural issues in information technology and the types of management and leadership problems at which Mr. Jackson hints, I think Yahoo is in a vulnerable position.
What will happen in 2009? The Yahoo of the 1996 to 1999 period will become a dim memory. The 2009 Yahoo is morphing into an America Online with a different logo. Now tell me why I am wrong. Just offer up some holiday facts to support your position.
Stephen Arnold, December 25, 2008
Google Takes More Market Share
December 20, 2008
I got some flak for my assertion at the Enterprise Search Summit in September 2008. I stated bluntly that Google had won. Well, some folks did not like that remark. These wizards will want to skip the comScore ratings for November 2008. Don’t read the Houston Chronicle’s run down here. The newspaper’s Web site provide a detailed summary of what comScore’s report on the search horse race said. In a nutshell, the Google’s market share rose. Microsoft and Yahoo lost ground. I stand by my comment in San Jose. The attendance was, shall we say, somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, the handful of search attendees heard it from me. “The GOOG has won Web search.” If you have other data to disprove my assertion, let me know. Conference organizers and attendees that don’t want to hear plain talk will want to skip the comScore league table as well. The ostrich approach works pretty well for traditional media, dead tree publishers, and those of similar ilk.
Stephen Arnold, December 20, 2008
Semantic Search Laid Bare
December 17, 2008
Yahoo’s Search Blog here has an interesting interview with Dr. Rudi Studer. The focus is semantic search technologies, which are all the rage in enterprise search and Web search circles. Dr. Studer, according to Yahoo:
is no stranger to the world of semantic search. A full professor in Applied Informatics at University of Karlsruhe, Dr. Studer is also director of the Karlsruhe Service Research Institute, an interdisciplinary center designed to spur new concepts and technologies for a services-based economy. His areas of research include ontology management, semantic web services, and knowledge management. He has been a past president of the Semantic Web Science Association and has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Web Semantics.
If you are interested in semantics, you will want to read and save the full text of this interview. I want to highlight three points that caught my attention and then–in my goosely manner–offer several observations.
First, Dr. Studer suggests that “lightweight semantic technologies” have a role to play. He said:
In the context of combining Web 2.0 and Semantic Web technologies, we see that the Web is the central point. In terms of short term impact, Web 2.0 has clearly passed the Semantic Web, but in the long run there is a lot that Semantic Web technologies can contribute. We see especially promising advancements in developing and deploying lightweight semantic approaches.
The key idea is lightweight, not giant semantic engines grinding in a lights out data center.
Second, Dr. Studer asserts:
Once search engines index Semantic Web data, the benefits will be even more obvious and immediate to the end user. Yahoo!’s SearchMonkey is a good example of this. In turn, if there is a benefit for the end user, content providers will make their data available using Semantic Web standards.
The idea is that in this chicken and egg problem, it will be the Web page creators’s job to make use of semantic tags.
Finally, Dr. Studer identifies tools as an issue. He said:
One problem in the early days was that the tool support was not as mature as for other technologies. This has changed over the years as we now have stable tooling infrastructure available. This also becomes apparent when looking at the at this year’s Semantic Web Challenge. Another aspect is the complexity of some of the technologies. For example, understanding the foundation of languages such as OWL (being based on Description Logics) is not trivial. At the same time, doing useful stuff does not require being an expert in Logics – many things can already be done exploiting only a small subset of all the language features.
I am no semantic expert. I have watched several semantic centric initiatives enter the world and–somewhat sadly–watched them die. Against this background, let me offer three observations:
- Semantic technology is plumbing and like plumbing, semantic technology should be kept out of sight. I want to use plumbing in a user friendly, problem free setting. Beyond that, I don’t want to know anything about plumbing. Lightweight or heavyweight, I think some other users may feel the same way. Do I look at inverted indexes? Do you?
- The notion of putting the burden on Web page or content creators is a great idea, but it won’t work. When I analyzed the five Programmable Search Engine inventions by Ramanathan Guha as part of an analysis for the late, great BearStearns, it was clear that Google’s clever Dr. Guha assumed most content would not be tagged in a useful way. Sure, if content was properly tagged, Google could ingest that information. But the core of the PSE invention was Google’s method for taking the semantic bull by the horns. If Dr. Guha’s method works, then Google will become the semantic Web because it will do the tagging work that most people cannot or will not do.
- The tools are getting better, but I don’t think users want to use tools. Users want life to be easy, and figuring out how to create appropriate tags, inserting them, and conforming to “standards” such as they are is no fun. The tools will thrill developers and leave most people cold. Check out the tools section at a hardware store. What do you see? Hobbyists and tinkerers and maybe a few professionals who grab what they need and head out. Semantic tools will be like hardware: of interest to a few.
In my opinion, the Google – Guha approach is the one to watch. The semantic Web is gaining traction, but it is in its infancy. If Google jump starts the process by saying, “We will do it for you”, then Google will “own” the semantic Web. Then what? The professional semantic Web folks will grouse, but the GOOG will ignore the howls of protest. Why do you think the GOOG hired Dr. Guha from IBM Almaden? Why did the GOOG create an environment for Dr. Guha to write five patent applications, file them on the same day, and have the USPTO publish five documents on the same day in February 2007? No accident tell you I.
Stephen Arnold, December 17, 2008
Stephen Arnold
Yahoo: Missing the Obvious
December 11, 2008
Web Pro News here has a very interesting discussion of Yahoo’s BOSS search service. Chris Crum’s “How Much Demand Is There for Open Search?” answer this question with the statement, “A Lot According to Yahoo”. You must read this article. First, it provides links to Yahoo’s explanation of BOSS. I can never remember what the letters mean, and I don’t have a compelling need to stress my addled goose brain. I can navigate to Google, enter BOSS, and click on the Google link to the service which is number five in the results list today (December 8, 2008). Run the same query on Yahoo and the direct link is the number two result. My thought, “Why not boost BOSS so it is number one and in one of the ads on the page. Nope, not Yahoo. Second, the story shows an impressive graph with BOSS daily queries running at 10 million per day. That’s a lot of monetizable traffic. Nope, Yahoo did not engineer the system to count the clicks. Here’s the quote in Mr. Crum’s story from Yahoo’s BOSS team member Bill Michels:
“Michels is also “quick to point out that, “because these queries are delivered via the BOSS API and served up by our partners, they aren’t counted as Yahoo! Search queries by comScore or other metrics providers.”
My thought is that Yahoo figured out part of the problem. There are tricky Google style methods to track these clicks, and there are even simpler methods in use. AC Nielsen has patents on a couple of angles that could serve as inspiration to Yahoo. Finally, Mr. Crum is willing to give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt, which I find admirable. He wrote:
I think time will tell how much demand there really is for open search, and how much (and if) Yahoo’s new strategies really cut into Google’s percentage of the search market share. It is refreshing to see some new and different things happening with Yahoo and search in general, regardless.
My take on this is that Yahoo is in a rush to demonstrate that it can not only run with the big dog but take a bite out of its tail zone. Yahoo is going to have to find a way to monetize its traffic. My addled goose brain recalls that Yahoo was slow to monetize Flickr after its purchase by Yahoo. Delicious was recoded over a period of two years and not effectively monetized. But with so many bright people and such an imperative to make money, I think Yahoo has need of some different thinking.
For Yahoo, I think the gap between it and Google may now be too great to bridge. Yahoo needs more services that generate 10 million queries a day. Monetization may need to become a priority and quickly.
Stephen Arnold, December 12, 2008
Yahoo Jumping Ahead of Google
December 7, 2008
On December 7, 2008, PCWorld reported that Yahoo will offer abstracts, not laundry lists of search results. The news story I saw appeared in the Yahoo technology news service. You can read “Yahoo Technology Will Offer Abstracts of Search Results” here. If the link goes dead, try the PCWorld site itself here. When I saw the story, the search engine on the PCWorld site couldn’t locate the story. Nothing new there, of course. The key point in the unsigned article was that Yahoo’s Bangalore research facility has figure out how to abstract key information on the page. The idea is that when a user searches for “hotel”, the system would provide an address, map, and other information. I described a similar function in my description of Google’s dossier function. See US20070198481. According to the news story, Yahoo will roll out this service in 2009. My thought is that these types of smart services work really well when described on paper. The value of these “reports” or “answer” type systems is that language can be tricky. Google’s approach relies on “context”, a system and method disclosed in the February 2007 patent documents filed by Google’s Ramanathan Guha. My hunch is that Yahoo went public because of the rumors that Google was starting to use some of its niftier technology in certain public facing services. The Googler with whom I had interaction in London knew zero about the dossier function. Maybe Yahoo is trying to jump ahead of Google. We’ll see. I think Yahoo needs to address the shortcomings of its core search service first.
Stephen Arnold, December 7, 2008
Microsoft Yahoo: Not Interested Becomes Interested
December 6, 2008
After a fun-filled 10 hour flight from England to cold Kentucky, I chuckled at “Ballmer Says Yahoo Search Deal Better Sooner than Later” by Dawn Kawamoto here. The London Times got a piece of the story but Microsoft and others disavowed any interest in Yahoo. After hiring Yahoo search expert Qi Lu, Ms. Kawamoto snagged this comment from Mr. Ballmer:
I think a search deal makes great sense for Microsoft, and Yahoo, and I think I’ve been very open about that…Our focus on portal and search is super-strong, and even if we never do a Yahoo deal or anything else, I wanted to have Qi come on board. It is kind of a bonus that if something happened with Yahoo I’m sure it’s somewhat simpler.
The renewed interest is fascinating to me. Microsoft will face some challenges because it will have Live.com search, Fast Search & Transfer, its own SharePoint search, and Powerset. I don’t think search is what Microsoft needs. My hunch is that Yahoo search is seen as an eyeball deal. In my opinion, it will be interesting to see if the deal goes through. Then will a tie up with Yahoo deliver more eyeballs or will those eyeballs deduplicate themselves. What happens if the combined Web site search traffic flat lines or declines relative to Google. Microsoft is buying clicks with its cash back program. I think there are some assumptions about traffic that will become clearer if the deal goes through.
Stephen Arnold, December 6, 2008
Microsoft – Yahoo: Just a Rumor
November 30, 2008
The London Times pumped up traffic to its Web site with its report that Microsoft was going to buy Yahoo’s search unit for billions. Reuters, on the other hand, posted “Microsoft Yahoo Deal Total Fiction” and cited the Web log “All Things Digital.” You can read the Reuters’ article here. Sitting in rainy London with a flakey Internet connection, I have no clue what’s going on. I find it hard to believe that the London Times would get a story completely wrong. I was curious about Carl Icahn’s increasing his stake in the rudderless Yahoo. Nothing about Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s interests are stable. The one fixed point in this drama is the fact that Google enjoys a commanding lead in Internet search. Maybe Google tipped the Times of London to watch the Redmond giant and the Yahoo dwarf react?
Stephen Arnold, Novmeber 30, 2008
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