Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

An anonymous reader writes "It's pretty clear from this analysis as to which company is ahead of the game. Take this simple comparison: at Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest. This has resulted in new offerings like Google News and social networking site Orkut. At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring)."

Uhm, yes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Yahoo!, but Google pulled in $3.2 billion from their ad service last year.

20% personal project?

[NoseBag]

Google, engineers are expected to spend one day a week on a project of personal interest.

AT&T top management tried this in Dallas in the 90's until a manager took them at their word and enforced the 1/5 rule. The resultant loss in overall productivity quickly caught managements eye and the policy was quietly curtailed.

Re:Hiring?

[AKAImBatman]

They need to open an office in Chicago

I'm in Chicago as well. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that Google Jobs has postings for a new office to be opening in Chicago! Don't believe me? Look here. [google.com] I just hope you have a PHD in triplet if you want to apply. :-/

(Actually, I think Google probably hires 99% of their people through reference or because they worked at other big tech companies. I did some research to see if they have ever hired anyone from the Job postings on their website and came up empty. It may be just because these things are not publicized, but my gut says that emailing to [e-mail] is a pointless exercise.)

Re:Brand Matters

[X]

Sigh. You know that part of the deal with YME is that it is integrated with messenger, right? You can share music with your IM buddies and you guys can see what each other is listening too.

Just because you perceive two independent applications doesn't mean that they are two independent applications, or that someone else might perceive them as two different applications.

I mean, both Google and Yahoo have toolbars that also include pop-up blocking. What does pop-up blocking have to do with the toolbars? Well, I guess they both involve a browser, but beyond that, nothing. Why is it integrated in? Because they thought it'd be a good feature that users would want. Maybe some people just want the toolbar and others just want the pop-up blocking, but I notice you aren't saying anything about that.

Re:I wonder

[Momoru]

I know everyone else already hammered you for this, but seriously Yahoo has innovated alot more things then Google has, and bought less companies as well. Google bought the underlying tech behind Google maps, google bought Orkut, and Blogger. So that leaves Google with Search engine (yahoo created theirs first), news (yahoo had this along time ago), personalized portal (yahoo first), web based email (yahoo first). Google may improve the wheel a little but they have not came out with many original ideas compared to Yahoo. Even this SMS stuff Google is getting into now, I remember back in 1998 I could have Yahoo send me news and weather alerts and what not on my cell phone. Yahoo became like MS for a while, in that it had no competition, so why innovate...but now that Google is giving a challenge, Yahoo is already starting to come up with a bunch of new stuff. Heck Yahoo has shown us some betas that improve search! Google's search has been stagnant for years now, and isnt that why we liked Google in the first place? Compare Yahoo and Google again in a few years... maybe if Google experienced a .com burst like Yahoo, it would be a little more conservative for a while too.

Re:There is no comparison

[rojo]

I've used Yahoo! mail for years and I gladly pay the $18 a year for the plus mail. That's pretty cheap for pop3, no ads (not even text), 2gb of space, wap access on my phone, and the ability to easily use my own domain or work domain when composing a message. Not to mention some of the best spam filtering I've tried. Also it's not in beta, unlike gmail.

Re:not a portal?

[carlivar]

If you don't want the messy portalness of Yahoo, just go to search.yahoo.com.

Re:Odds

[sessamoid]

And if you want to find a Movie Time your better off on yahoo than google...

Actually, not necessarily. Go to google and do a search on:

movies [your zip code]

The links to the movie titles and showtimes take me directly to the theater's page to buy tickets online. Yahoo doesn't link to the theater's page that way. Also, Google's is a text page, so it loads as fast as possible even on my Treo. Yahoo's page is typically loaded with graphics and animated advertisements. Also, Google lists more theaters in my area by default than does Yahoo.