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Google Businesses The Internet

Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course 458

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-work-on dept.
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)."
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Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course More

Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course

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  • Yahoo may be boring (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:00AM (#12872225)
    But at least those of us without 4.0 GPAs and PhD's can work there.
    • If it is worth working. Every time I talk to an agent jobhunting for them he is trying to offer me a 20% salary cut. To add insult to injury they also have the nerve to ask if your current salary is "negotiable". I have started answering "Yes, if you would like to negotiate it in the right direction, in other words - UP".

      No thanks. They may have a few really smart people like Delany on their staff, but with this rate of pay I somehow doubt that they are going to get anywhere near getting and retaining tale

    • Re:Yahoo may be boring (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well let me the first one to admit that I left Google few weeks ago. Yes they are innovative company and blah blah, but they are getting more into consumers than doing good science/mathematics. If you are into writing softwares etc, go ahead. But if you are like me who is more into algorithms and applied mathematics, innovations have stopped long ago. The neat stuff about data scavanging and mining is long gone. They have one infrastructure built and trying to milk it.

      I am not trolling, but the sweet rese

    • Re:Yahoo may be boring (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Cpyder ( 57655 )
      I recently interview with them, and was offered a job, even though I've only got (the Belgian equivalent of) a Bachelor's Degree in CS. Maybe they require lots of paper for their R&D positions, but for positions in their NOC it's skills that matter, not paper. I didn't take the job because I got a better offer closer to home, but my lack of 'impressive' degrees wasn't a problem with them.
      • to hear that someone turned Google down! That's like telling ST. Peter at the pearly gates "No, thanks"..
        • Even Google isn't worth commuting to Mountain View from the East Bay. I did that for two months a while back (not for Google, but for another tech company in MV) and vowed to never do it again. My time and stress levels are more important to me.

          If the job isn't in the East Bay or San Francisco, I'm not interested (I'm working in SF currently). My SO is currently commuting to Palo Alto for the summer and she recently decided the same thing.

  • I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jav1231 ( 539129 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:02AM (#12872237)
    I wonder how much of this has to do with Yahoo's age. Yahoo has been around long enough to become a more "standard" company. One that eventually loses touch with its grassroots beginnings and has to take it's catchy phrases from travelling self-help speakers. Google is probably headed that way, but for now they seem to have a few original ideas left in their backpacks.
    • Google's beginnings were a desire to make money. Lots of it. I don't think that there's any chance of them missing sight of that. Anybody who thinks that Google is a altrusitic entity is incredibly naive.

      • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

        by qwijibo ( 101731 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:18AM (#12872410)
        Every business wants to make lots of money. There's nothing wrong with making money providing services people want. The factor that makes people like google is that they do still provide services people want, not just find new ways to scam people out of more money.

      • What was the old google.stanford.edu thing about? I thought Google was a research project turned company.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fitzghon ( 578350 )
      I agree.
      Google is an innovative company that comes up with fantastic ideas again and again, and implements them.
      On the other hand, the article notes that Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad. Yahoo's in-house research team appears deficient when compared to Google's.
      Google is snatching up a myriad of the brightest minds around, and I think that over time this will prove to be their most important assent in the "search engine race".

      Fitzghon
      • Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad.
        and Google isn't buying any services?
      • To re-frame this into the overused /. mold...

        Step 1: snatch up a myriad of the brightest minds around
        Step 2: ???
        Step 3: Profit!!!

        Step1 isn't even the most important step here. * First off, there are those who assert that just about everyone is capable of working at "nearly brilliant" levels (I added the "nearly.") of creativity, given the right environment, it's just that most people have been trained by society not to be creative. I'm hesitant to buy in too fully, but I will say that merely good contribu

      • Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)

        by Momoru ( 837801 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @12:11PM (#12872949) Homepage Journal
        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.
        • I was under the impression that the first portal site was netscape.com who created it after realising they had so many page hits because their site was the default start page for their browser, and the first webmail was hotmail.com.

          But yes, I generally agree with you about people under-rating Yahoo. They're by no means a bad company, and have shown the ability to do cool stuff many times. Their new online music store seems pretty nifty, at least, more customisable than iTunes Music Store is. Only downer i

      • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Cpyder ( 57655 )
        On the other hand, the article notes that Yahoo bought the VoIP service DialPad.

        Oh no! Yahoo bought something? Are you serious?! Well, long live Google then, because they invent [dejanews.com] everything [blogger.com] in [keyhole.com] house [picasa.com], don't they [kuro5hin.org]?

    • Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cybersaga ( 451046 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:15AM (#12872381) Homepage
      Google is probably headed that way

      If Google was headed that way, they would have been there by now. They are huge. They are "standard".

      The "20% your time" vs. "submit ideas" is the key. Management rarely sees potential where there is potential. How many times in history have great ideas been turned down because a manager says, "Oh that'll never work"?

      At Google, by the time something becomes an official project, they already know it works.

      When there's no guessing game, you can't be wrong.

      • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Snaller ( 147050 )
        If Google was headed that way, they would have been there by now. They are huge. They are "standard".

        Oh no, they are heading that way. With their new design of Google groups which many people, myself include find has greatly reduced readablity and navigability - and they don't care. And with the way they refuse to give the user the right to store his password in his MSIE browser, etc etc. I think they have peaked, thats not to say they aren't going to make some wonderfull inventions on their way down - wh
    • Like,

      Throwing Fish..
      Moving cheese..
      Giving them the Pickle...(I'm not kidding...).
      "A setback is a setup for a comeback" - Willy Jolly (again I'm not kidding).
      "The Power of One" - One what? I have no idea
      and the list goes on...

      It would be nice if the company actually embraced new ideas instead of pretending to.

      Sean D.

  • Googledot! All Google All The Time (Score:5, Funny)

    by JPelorat ( 5320 ) * on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:02AM (#12872241)
    Google for Google. Google that Googles.

  • Is it me... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by InVinoVeritas ( 781151 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:02AM (#12872242)
    Or are Yahoo! and Google somehow worth billions of $(US) by selling banner ads.

    • Uhm, yes? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:06AM (#12872297)
      I don't know about Yahoo!, but Google pulled in $3.2 billion from their ad service last year.

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

        Funny how on-line advertising is supposed to be dead, but when you make simple text ads that don't make you fear opening your browser...
    • Google sells google appliances, but yes, the bulk of their revenue comes in the form of banner ads.

      Yahoo has a decent number of subscription and premium offerings such as Yahoo Stores. Still, I'd say most of their revenue still comes in the form of banner ads. It's not really so much of a bubble -- advertisers aren't going away, and if there's two places that companies want to want to keep advertising on, it's yahoo and google.

      I often wonder how slashdot survives ... good sales channel for thinkgeek perh

  • Google vs. Yahoo? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Two search engine companies? Competing?

    I am shocked!

  • Hit the wall... (Score:5, Funny)

    by markild ( 862998 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872260)
    "I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"

    Can't they just do it, and get it over with. I'm starting to get tired of all the fuzz about them now a days.

  • not a portal? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bad_outlook ( 868902 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872267) Homepage
    Remember when Google said they weren't going to become a portal, and while they have tons of innovation, their 'personalized home page' and email service are starting to feel just like that. Are they just trying to avoid being 'tagged' as one thing and instead trying to retain their own personality? From what I've seen they've taken the leadership role from Yahoo years ago, so I wouldn't worry about anyone trying to piegeon-hole them; they are their own entity and a driving force for the Internet as a whole. Will be interesting to see what Google looks like in 10 years, heck, we'll be able to say "When I was a kid, Google was a search engine, that's it"
    • Yeah, but at the time, we all hated what a portal was.

      I don't mind what they've got.

      Plus, the default "www.google.com" will probably not change much.

    • Re:not a portal? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shaper_pmp ( 825142 )
      They aren't a portal - Yahoo is a portal - a huge, sprawling mess with a search box lost somewhere on it.

      Google is a search company - a clean, sparse search engine homepage with some (~10) links to other projects they own - a very different design philosophy.

      Yahoo is a "media" company - they lost sight of search a long time ago, and have only recently started actively pushing it again (how long were they syndicating Google - or others' - results for?). This loss of emphasis on what made them big is what

    • Re:not a portal? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      Yahoo and Google have two completely different motivations...

      Yahoo buys companies so that 1) they can at least move in the direction of an AOL-styled walled-garden [wikipedia.org] area, 2) so they can overall have more page-views and thus have more advertising space, and 3) so they can "synergize" between the offerings to advertise between them and generally present a unified web presence.

      Google buys companies and develops new projects because 1) they have money to invest and want to grow it generally, 2) they have mo

  • And Smaller Posters Underneath (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872268)
    that ask people to stop submitting google pages with "Yahoo" photoshopped over "Google."
  • While there are great possibilities concerning those personal projects of google employees, it's still a risk. For many employees it could just turn into a wasted day. For others, it could turn into something that Google puts a lot of money into and ends up being a flop. Hopefully enough good (profitable) ideas come out of it but there's no guarantee.

    • Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Underbridge ( 666784 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:10AM (#12872338)
      While there are great possibilities concerning those personal projects of google employees, it's still a risk. For many employees it could just turn into a wasted day. For others, it could turn into something that Google puts a lot of money into and ends up being a flop. Hopefully enough good (profitable) ideas come out of it but there's no guarantee.

      That's why they call it R&D.

    • Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dewboy ( 22280 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:10AM (#12872339) Homepage Journal
      The risk is definitely there, but what you get from letting your employees go on seredipitous excursions once a week is potentially more valuable than profitable ideas: you get very happy employees. Google already has a rep for hiring only the best and brightest -- seems like they have a good way of holding on to them, as well.

    • Re:personal projects not necessarily helpful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Peter_Pork ( 627313 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:29AM (#12872520)

      What else would you use to promote innovation? Posters in the restroom? Inspirational speeches by top management? Innovation is about allowing your employees to have lots of ideas, trying them out, and be open to take the few that really work, making billions out of them. Sure, this process can be terribly inefficient and expensive if poorly managed, but Google is probably smarter than that. Also, innovation is about smart, creative people having time to think and having little fear to be wrong. When you give the opportunity to innovate to the top talent Google hires, you cannot help but go well beyond your competitors. Guaranteed.

      I'm not saying they will not screw up the business side, and go under. I'm saying that, in the technical side, their setup is just perfect. I cannot think of a better way of building an innovation juggernaut.

  • Google + Yahoo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872273)
    Google + Yahoo = Twingine [twingine.com] (formerly the much better sounding yagoohoogle)

  • ZDNet r0x0rz! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872274) Homepage Journal
    ...like a one-string ukulele.
    Google's US$2.5 billion war chest and freedom let employees throw many new services against the wall to see what sticks. But critics question whether Google has an efficient process for managing innovation. The free e-mail service Gmail, for example, is still in beta testing after nearly two years.
    "It's like the Wild West at Google. They have enough money and enough disregard for the status quo," said one industry insider who asked to remain anonymous.
    Google uses the word 'beta' as a fig-leaf, to manage user expectations.
    Doesn't take a whole lot of brain cells to grasp that.
    Then again, ZDNet publishes Dvorak, so go figure...
    • Beta testing my ass. Your right, it's still being "tested" but they are making money off it because I'm seeing those ads in my email. Besides, you can't give AWAY Gmail invitations these days.

    • Re:ZDNet r0x0rz! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Eil ( 82413 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @12:12PM (#12872967) Homepage Journal

      Let's see here, Google's being criticized by "industry insiders" for giving their employees loads of free time, starting up new and enormously popular projects, "disregarding the status quo", and making billions of dollars in the meantime.

      Sounds like somebody's jealous. Isn't it even remotely possible that Google is simply proving to the old-fashioned business world what can be accomplished when you take real, meaningful steps boost and maintain morale among employees?

  • My Yahoo integration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:04AM (#12872277)
    Yahoo has been around for a long time. I used them as far back as 95ish. I can't remember when my.yahoo.com came along but I have been a long time user since. However, anyone remember the Denial of Service attacks back in ~2001(?), since then I have been using google, msn, jeeves, in fact all search engines as I was so ingrained into yahoo that I couldn't even search using other engines. But really, the search aspect is such a low priority now that I don't care what engine I use; the real draw of yahoo is the integration of my.yahoo. Google has just now started getting that integration but yahoo has done this for years. I don't think that google will be able to overcome that time/gap that yahoo had in creating it's service. In the long run I believe yahoo will win out.

    • Somedays I feel like a visitor from an alien world on the internet. Integration? my.yahoo? portal? It's like they're speaking. I hope google stays smart, and keeps all their separate services separate. The day I need a gmail account to use google search is the day I stop using google search, and that'll be a sad, sad day.

  • Boring is sometimes good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:07AM (#12872302)
    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)."

    Is this a flashback to 1999 or what? A sky-high IPO from a company that "thinks outside the box" when it comes to employees. Do they have pinball and video games for their employees to use whenever they want too?

    The only difference is that Google actually has a business plan and makes some money. Do they make enough money to support an $80B market cap though? Only time will tell that one.

  • Google is so dead (Score:5, Funny)

    by bman08 ( 239376 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:07AM (#12872305)
    First an idea factory... Next thing you know, yahoo!'s going to be putting up 'Let your imagination soar' posters in the break room. Revenue should double. But, if they really want do dominate the internet, yahoo is going to have to spring for the 'employees must wash hands' poster in the bathroom. While typhus and ringworm bring google to its knees, the clean handed geniuses at Yahoo! laugh all the way to the bank.

  • Room for both. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alex_guy_CA ( 748887 ) <{moc.tdlefneohcs} {ta} {xela}> on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:07AM (#12872310) Homepage
    IMHO the idea behind this article is just plain dumb. It would be like an article saying that in 5 years we won't have ABC and CBS or Disney Land AND 6 Flags. I use Yahoo AND Google every day, and I think I'm not alone.

    • Re:Room for both. (Score:2, Redundant)

      by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) *
      Exactly. While reading the summary I was thinking 'boy, this is like saying Pepsi is out to stomp Coke out of existance because they have 'make your own syrup mix' day'

  • Apples and Oranges - Time is the Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kinetic Kit ( 156741 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:08AM (#12872315) Homepage
    Google and Yahoo are much different companies today and part of working at either business means understanding really what each company is trying to do. Google is a technology company; Yahoo is now a media company. The biggest difference, however, is this:

    Google makes money by keeping people on their website for as short a time as possible. Yahoo makes money by keeping people on their website for as long as possible. The Internet traffic statistics are quite telling.

    http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lan g&lang=en [alexa.com]
    • Last time I checked, Google hardly made any revenue supplying technology. AFAIK the overwhelming bulk of their revenue comes from showing adverts to people who use their service, which sounds like a fairly traditional media company business model to me.
    • Yeah... Yahoo's service is more complete. But I doubt I'm alone when I say that I don't need webmail, or instant messaging, or online chatting. I've been there, I've done that, and I don't feel like doing it again.

      I don't like Yahoo's webpage. It's cluttered, and full of crap. It reminds me of MSN, which is 2nd according to Alexa's stats.

      Incidentally... more people may use Yahoo's other services, but many more people fall to Google for their searching. In that respect, Yahoo fails. It's all well and good
    • Yahoo makes money by keeping people on their website for as long as possible.

      That's because Yahoo! has such a massive amount of content on its own web sites that you can stay all day at Yahoo!'s various web sites. Yahoo! has not only search, but discussion groups, news, lots of multimedia content and even now a music store selling .WMA-format music files.

  • What the hey? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by annunaki2k2 ( 862300 )
    What happened to google being a search engine? Thats all I have and will ever use it for...... As for yahoo, forget it! I like the clean lines of google.

  • 20% personal project? (Score:5, Informative)

    by NoseBag ( 243097 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:09AM (#12872326)
    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.
    • This is why you have to go through about 15 interviews to get hired by Google.

      I doubt AT&T was that strict about who they brought on board.

      With a bunch of Joe Normals as employees, of course the 20% rule will fail.
    • There are people with different personality types and different feelings about their work. Google is hoping that the kind of people they attract are the kind who will do something interesting that might help the company. AT&T strikes me as the kind of place where that policy would have an almost exactly 20% drop in productivity. A lot of large companies have a lot of people who will do the bare minimum to not get fired.

      Google is betting on having a significant number of the other type of person. If

  • Target audience (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Iriel ( 810009 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:09AM (#12872331) Homepage
    ...is the lesson I learned getting my degree in Interactive Media Design. I don't see Yahoo and Google in competition as much as simply different services. Some of their departments cross over, but I use Gooogle for finding just about anything and email, while Yahoo is my portal to movie listings, my stock quote and a place to store bookmarks, notes and calendar based events.

    It really depends on what you're looking for in most of the areas of service from each company. Google seems more interesting in refining ways to search and pioneering new uses for the internet. On the other hand, Yahoo is where I go for a remote login PDA. I'd like Google to provide notes/calendar features, but if they don't then I'm happy with a 2GB inbox, picture uploading, specialized searches and nifty maps. I'll just use Yahoo as an internet organizer.

  • Google Man. (Score:5, Funny)

    by adam31 ( 817930 ) <adam31.gmail@com> on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:10AM (#12872343)
    Google Man, Google Man,
    Size of the entire internet man,
    Usually kind to smaller man,
    Google Man.

    Yahoo Man, Yahoo Man,
    Hit on the head with a frying pan,
    lives his life in a garbage can.
    Yahoo man.

    Google Man and Yahoo Man,
    Meet on the street in internet land,
    They have a fight,
    Google wins.
    Google Man.

  • It's Technology, Mate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SpinningAround ( 449335 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:12AM (#12872351)
    I am waiting for a company for the courage of its convictions. The company that won't sell it's soul for the NASDAQ. Maybe it's Google. Maybe it's not.

    I like Google 'cause they are GOOD. Good at what they do. Yahoo is worthless as a portal and a search engine.

    Stay with it boys and girls. Don't be a NASDAQ whore. Take the long view. Ignore the market. Do what the geeks do best.

  • Who cares who's ahead of the game? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:12AM (#12872358)

    Choice is good.

  • Innovation. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by merdaccia ( 695940 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:13AM (#12872371)
    "I do believe that Google will hit a wall eventually, and it will hit it spectacularly," said the book author Moore. "The real question is: What will it do then?"
    I think Moore's missing the point. The reason a company hits a wall is that it stops being innovative, and instead tries to keep milking past success (ahem, SCO, cough). I don't recall Yahoo! making anything innovative recently, but correct me if I'm wrong. Google, on the other hand, is creating useful services left and right. It's already dominated search, and its webmail system is vastly popular and not even out of beta. Google Scholar needs some work, but Google news and Google maps are making good headway. Google isn't going to hit a wall as long as it keeps encouraging its innovative employees.

    Google is like the annoying smart kid that sits in the first row of class. Yahoo's in that class too, watching the smart kid get all the glory, and it can do nothing about it. It's time for Yahoo to either change classrooms or start studying.

    • Re:Innovation. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by X ( 1235 )
      I think Moore's missing the point. The reason a company hits a wall is that it stops being innovative

      I think Moore actually has a better understanding of the problem. Do you think company execs sit around a table and say to each other, "let's stop being innovative now"? No, it's a situation that happens, and it tends to be inevitable. You're faced with the "innovator's dilemma, and sooner or later it'll get you. Google is just too young to have been hit with this. They're doing everything they can to dodg

  • It's pretty clear... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArbiterOne ( 715233 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:14AM (#12872379) Homepage
    It's pretty clear, from this post, which side the poster is on. Take this simple comparison: At the site named Google, you are expected to search and find whatever you want. But at "Slashdot", readers are invited to, well, submit stories (read boring).

    Really.

  • Brand Matters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:15AM (#12872385)
    What Yahoo still seems to be missing is that brand really matters. And brand is related to trust and doing the right thing by customers.

    Take their Yahoo! music engine for example. A nice piece of software. But I, along with many I'd hope, are tired of downloading software to find it installs lots of other largely bugus but "required" junk. This is exactly the adware phenomenon that drives people nuts.

    Of course, the Yahoo Music engine REQUIRES yahoo messenger to play music as a dependency (and no doubt will add more "requirements" in the future to increase revenue). Obviously, they saw a chance to push garbage that people wouldn't otherwise download.

    In the end, this reflects on your brand. Either you are the company that respects my communication preferences, or you "update" them, and set them all to send me spam, and claim it is in enhancement (Yahoo).

    Either you provide me with a cool music engine, or you "enhance" it with unrelated downloads.

    Bottom line, many of us don't have the time or interest to sort out if we are going to get screwed over. The $6/month for the music engine is irrelevant actually for me, that is free. But the trust / hassle, and just being able to get what I want without tons of junk, that matters a lot.

    If my mother, who is not as quickly able to uninstall stuff, downloads music engine, and then has messenger sitting forever in her taskbar, that sucks. Thankfully, I can tell her to download itunes, and she will have a clean and good experience. Neither she nor the queen of england want to be bothered with Yahoo! Messenger crap.

    Pretty soon, folks like my mom, and myself, will trust Apple / Google, and when they release stuff, be happy to try it on the premise we are less likely to be screwed. Yahoo has a history in the other direction.

    So I don't begrude Yahoo it's right to bundle a nice music engine with whatever other stuff it wants to load it with. I just don't
    understand it. In the end, the company that develops products to deliver junk as its goal will fail to a company that developes a product that delivers what people want. I mean, are you putting
    together a music service or not? If so, focus on the damn music part.

    Long term I think this brand power will really matter, and Yahoo's history relative to Google put google in a good spot.

    • Re:Brand Matters (Score:5, Informative)

      by X ( 1235 ) <x@xman.org> on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @12:03PM (#12872859) Homepage Journal
      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.

  • Why is everyone so happy about personal projects? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Paradox ( 13555 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:17AM (#12872403) Homepage Journal
    I like Google. I'd love to work at Google.

    That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister. Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it. So it's not really a personal project, it's funded independent R&D.

    It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create, they can come up with things that another company their size couldn't, and do it cheaper (remember, Google employees are salaried, and likely you're going to work on the project in your spare time as well).

    Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project, and you paint Google's practice in a less favorable light.

    I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.

    • I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.

      Well that depends on what they do for you when they "co-opt" them. Given the atmosphere of Google it doesn't seem very likely that they would just take your idea, say "All your ideas are belong to us", and s

  • from what is becoming googledot more and more every day. How much did they pay for this one taco?

  • Google vs. Yahoo: On a Collision Course (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anne_Nonymous ( 313852 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:21AM (#12872459) Homepage Journal
    The scene: A collision.

    Idiot #1: "Hey! You got your Google in my Yahoo!"

    Idiot #2: "Dude! You got your Yahoo in my Google!"
    Together: "Yuuuuum..."

    Mr. Announcer Man: "Goohoo, two great tastes that go great together!"

  • Innovation != Profitability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JaF893 ( 745419 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:22AM (#12872463) Journal
    Google might be a lot more innovative than Yahoo! But it's not like Yahoo! are going out of business. [netimperative.com]

    Look at Microsoft - many here on /. say they aren't innovative but they still seem to making a tidy profit.

  • Yahoo is winning? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nonsequitor ( 893813 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:23AM (#12872478)
    "Yahoo has a big branded advertising business. Google is all search. To the extent that brand advertisers want to participate in the Internet, Yahoo's a better bet,"
    I guess this was written before a bunch of advertisers pulled their ads after finding out they were popping up while entering chat rooms for pedophiles. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/19/063920 5&tid=95&tid=98&tid=1/ [slashdot.org]
    So who wins? Though Google is bigger, Yahoo appears to have the upper hand when it comes to warm relations with Madison Avenue.
    I just think its funny that the article lists its relationship with ad agencies as one of the strengths Yahoo has over Google. Personally, I think Google's ads are less obtrusive since they dont flash at you and try to get your attention.
  • At Yahoo, there are posters promoting the "Idea Factory", where employees are invited to well, submit ideas (read boring).

    Yeah, but at Yahoo! Japan it's the "Super Happy Fun Idea Factory!", which isn't as boring, you have to admit. I'm already excited!
  • That comparison is the basis for judging who is in the lead?!?! Are good tech stories really that hard to come by these days?

  • Google being flooded (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:38AM (#12872605) Journal
    I've noticed that with its increased popularity google is increasingly becoming victim to spamming/etc. A lot of sites I'll visit which (according to google cache) have exactly what I need , but the current website is just a big block of advertising.

    My latest attempts to find speaking installation instructions for my Corolla lead to tons of these. The intro page will be full of sites which, despite seeming to have good content in the summary, end up with just links that want to sell you a $4 PDF on how to install door-panel speakers.

    There seem to be a few companies in particular that are guilty of this, but they have massive amounts of domains. Hopefully google can fix this soon (yahoo had a lot less ads though neither had the specific info I needed).

  • Boy Costanza Is Going to be angry...... (Score:3, Funny)

    by theannointed ( 893832 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @11:51AM (#12872719)
    "Yahoo, many analysts believe, is entering a new era as a media company rather than a tech innovator. It's been building a Hollywood headquarters and an entertainment team under newly hired Lloyd Braun, a former ABC executive" They hired Lloyd Braun? I hate Lloyd Braun. You know they say that he cost Mayor Dinkins the election.......

  • What Game are we talking about here? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ferreth ( 182847 ) on Tuesday June 21, 2005 @12:02PM (#12872849) Homepage Journal
    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)."

    So Google is ahead as far as technical innovation goes, by some measures. Some here seem to think that that would be enough to ensure success on other fronts, profit and size being the main ones. Can we say "Microsoft" people?

    While I think that Google and Yahoo can co-exist if they differentiat their offerings, the "winner" in this battle will be determined by marketing, not technical innovation. The average Joe User will not use Google's latest tool if it is not simple, and/or if the word does not get to Joe User.

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