As expected, the roll out of change in the world
of search is proving to be highly disruptive. Though the year is only
three weeks old, noticeable shifts are occurring among the largest
search entities and throughout the search marketing sector, making the
scenery much different this month than it was just a few short weeks
ago. These are among the most interesting times on the Internet as the
largest players are positioning themselves to take their unique and
collaborative runs through the year of global convergence.
For those interested in search marketing, a number
of things will soon be different, most notably, our assumptions about
the state of competition in the search sector. The three-way race
between Google, Yahoo and MSN is, for all intents and purposes, over.
Recently, Yahoo's chief financial officer, Susan
Decker, suffered the embarrassment of producing a poorly paraphrased
quote. She made a simple, clear and brutally honest statement agreeing
with a reality everybody else already perceived. It wasn't as much what
she said.
Decker acknowledged in an interview with Bloomberg
News that Google has a much largër share of the global search market
than Yahoo does and that the gap is not likely to be bridged anytime
soon.
"We don't think it's reasonable to assume
we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," Decker said.
"It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very
happy to maintain our market share."
The comment left some questioning Yahoo's
long-term commitment to excellence and innovative search technologies.
The attendant controversy stems in part from the way she chose to state
the obvious but also in part from a public perception that Yahoo has not
fully defined its place in the search sector. That three-way race
metaphor wasn't working anymore.
Google dominates today's versions of search and
both Yahoo and MSN are prepared to admit it. In short, the recent past
and the persistent present belong to Google. For its formal rivals, the
only place to look is the future. Time is accelerated, often to the
point of pointlessness in the tech world and that future is already
functioning online. It is just waiting mass user adoption.
The interview was conducted in April 2006, just
after Yahoo released fourth quarter financial results that, while wildly
profitable, were seen as mildly disappointing by investors. Wall St.
appeared to be expecting Google-sized gains from Yahoo, results even
Google will have a hard time matching when they release their Q4 numbers
next week.
As for the search marketing community, Yahoo
actually delivered good news that was buried beneath Decker's first
quote. Yahoo's CFO was also quoted saying, "We have held our own,
and we should gain revenue share in the industry as we roll out these
new initiatives. Our goal has been to hold our share and to be a
leading, if not the leading, total marketing platform, which would
include both brand and search."
Yahoo is improving its Yahoo Publisher Network and
is almost ready to bring it out of beta. The YPN is a live experiment in
online publishing built on the idea that an increasing number of
individual web users will help funnel large amounts traffïc based on
shared interests.
Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to have been badly
affected by losing the AOL deal to Google. It is almost as if Galileo's
law of inertia is applied in double doses in the Pacific Northwest. Very
little search related has moved forward from Microsoft over the past
year though they do maintain a relatively good search engine.
A year ago, Bill Gates told the world it hadn't
seen anything when it came to search. MSN search had just introduced its
own algorithmic search engine and was ready to challenge Google. Nine
months ago, Steve Ballmer noted MSN search was going to produce much
better results than Google.
Six months ago, Microsoft reorganized its
management structure to streamline integration between its software and
Internet services divisions, challenging Ray Ozzie to bring it all
together. Three months ago, Ballmer was said to be throwing chairs in a
fit over how badly Google was beating Microsoft, notably around hiring
and retaining talent.
A year later, the search results at MSN are pretty
much the same and they still haven't introduced a search-advertising
product to compete with Google's. Again, Google virtually owns the
space.
In the face of Google's dominance, Microsoft is
looking inward both figuratively and literally. The reorganization of
its management system in the autumn of 2005 was the first clue to how
Microsoft is preparing to redefine itself in relation to the search
sector. Gates' comments at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this
month mark the second.
Microsoft is retrenching behind the operating
system right now. While it is working to release its paid advertising
program adCenter by the summer, much of its efforts are said to be going
towards finally shipping the new Vista OS, with a number of search and
e-commerce tools included.
Google's dominance of today's version of search is
absolute, a big problem for Yahoo and MSN even as they look forward to
an expanded search environment. Search is the primary way to access
information on the web and in order to stay in business, Google's rivals
need to segment the concepts of search and find ways to excel in
specific areas while Google overshadows general search.
The next few months are going to seem like a
waiting game until the bevy of new products already introduced or soon
to be introduced, (and user adoption of those products), begins to
change the way searchers look for information and results are compiled.
There is going to be a lot more stuff available to the common searcher
and a lot more sources to draw from.
Yahoo is thinking outside the box by inviting
users to create their own media environments in order to facilitate
distribution of pay-per-use content (TV, music, movies) and
pay-per-click advertising.
MSN is again looking inside the box with its newly
revised focus on Vista. It hopes to erase the lines between the user,
their computing device and the Internet by integrating search and search
related products into commonly used software packages.
Google will continue being Google. As long as it
continues to build on its membership driven services and produce better
than adequate search results, the general public is likely to continue
using it more than any other search engine.
