Tag: web

What's a Yahoo! to do?

Post ImageAlmost every day now I read something about Yahoo! and its “problems” and/or “options”. Those are in quotes because it seems people are very divided on Yahoo! – some think it’s in trouble, others don’t. I’ve been a Yahoo! user since the days of the grey page-background, and if you count sites like Flickr and del.icio.us, I’m still a pretty active user. Allow me to put on my Yahoo! pundit hat for a moment.

I guess Yahoo!’s main problem is Google. Now that there’s a search-media company consistently outperforming Yahoo!, it makes them look old and stagnant. It’s actually pretty unfair, because let’s be honest, no one has the kind of growth that Google does. Yahoo! actually does pretty well in terms of search traffic, advertising dollars, and all that other stuff, but where they seem to be lacking is in respect.

So what’s a Yahoo! to do? Here are the most commonly suggested strategies I have come across:

Replace CEO Terry Semel
This suggestion is actually fairly new, and if you read Eric Jackson’s open letter to Yahoo!’s founders, it starts to make sense. Seems to me this is a relatively short-term fix though.

Buy AOL
Apparently Yahoo! has approached Time Warner about purchasing AOL. I think this would be a good deal for Time Warner, and a not so good one for Yahoo!. It would bring the failed AOL Time Warner merger to a complete end, but it would only provide a minor increase in Yahoo’s traffic and advertising, all things considered.

Buy Facebook
This rumor has been floating around for months actually. It might bring some more eyeballs to Yahoo!, but it would do nothing to help transform or improve the company. And besides, from everything I’ve read, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) is no Caterina Fake (Flickr founder).

Merge with eBay
The two companies might seem complimentary because of their completely different focuses, but that might present a problem rather than a solution. I agree with Fortune: I think this one is unlikely, because I think integrating eBay and Yahoo! would prove extremely difficult.

Sell to Microsoft
This one is my favorite, and it has a long history too, first appearing in June. Microsoft certainly has the cash, and it turns out that the two companies are fairly well-aligned – Yahoo! has made heavy investments into IE7, is a PlaysForSure supporter, and has hooked up with Microsoft on a number of initiatives ranging from Sitemaps to Instant Messaging. According to the latest comScore data (released today), a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would have around 40% of the search market compared with Google’s 45%. Of course, there are some easy to spot problems with this deal – mainly that Microsoft has invested heavily in Live Search and adCenter already. That’s not a total deal-breaker though.

Stay the course
The people that don’t view Yahoo! as floundering like this suggestion. Sure Google is #1 for now, but it can’t stay that way forever, right? Seems like this is Yahoo!’s currently preferred course of action. If they could somehow turn around their disappointing sales and profit numbers, this one might be the best option after all.

The Microsoft option is especially appealing to me, because it would have extremely broad ramifications for the industry. It also seems somewhat unlikely, given Microsoft’s huge investments in their online properties (MSN, Live.com, etc). That said, purchasing Yahoo! would instantly make them the leader on the web, a position they have long sought after. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo! ended up staying the course though, and in the end, maybe that’s better for everyone – Yahoo! included.

Update: Here is more excellent commentary on Yahoo’s current situation.

Amazon.com could power the new web

Post ImageI have become really interested in Amazon.com over the last little while. The stuff they are doing with their web services platform is just amazing, and it is already having a huge impact on how web businesses are created and operate. We are using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) in Podcast Spot, and I absolutely love it. Taking the guts of Amazon and making them available as services to other companies was a very smart decision in my opinion, despite what the investors on Wall Street might think.

Here are some excellent resources if you’d like to learn more:

I’m definitely watching to see what else Amazon launches because chances are, it’ll be useful. So far companies like Yahoo and Google have received far more Web 2.0 attention, but I think that will begin to change, and people will realize that Amazon.com is actually one of the most interesting tech companies around.

All the good domain names are gone!

Post ImageI came across a really fascinating article yesterday about Dennis Forbes, who has been studying a huge list of domain names in his spare time, making him something of a domainologist. Some of the things Mr. Forbes has found by looking at the list (which he got from someone at VeriSign) are truly amazing:

All of the 1,000 most common English words have been snatched up. The word “a” appears more than any other, though most of the time, of course, it’s just a letter in a longer word. The least-used common word is “consonant,” Mr. Forbes says, which is in just 42 domains, including “consonantpain.com,” which isn’t a misspelling but a word game.

Mr. Forbes checked the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1,219 most-common male names, the 2,841 most-common female names and the 10,000 most-common surnames; all were booked. Not only that, but when you link the top 300 first names with the top 300 last names, 89 percent of the resulting combinations are taken for male names and 84 percent for female ones.

And more generally?

For example, for every possible two-character and three-character combination, including both letters and numbers _ all possible domains are taken. Virtually all English words with four letters are claimed; those that aren’t are usually contractions, and Web rules don’t allow apostrophes.

Half of all domains are between nine and 15 characters long; the average length is 13. A domain can have, at most, 63 characters, and there are 550 such domains. In fact, some people have made a haiku-like art out of 63-character domain names.

Told you it was interesting! I’ve been known to buy domains on a whim, but there are people who have turned it into a multi-million dollar business. Digital real-estate is valuable as well it seems!

Read: NFD News

Mindboggling – Microsoft buying Yahoo?

Post ImageEvery once in a while a rumor comes along that is so outlandish, so crazy, so never-gonna-happen, that it makes you really hope it does happen! The latest such rumor is that Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo, a rumor that has sent investors into a craze:

Analysts said reasons for the heightened interest in Yahoo call options ranged from recent rumors that software company Microsoft Corp. might be seeking to partner or merge with the Internet company, to bullish expectations for the company’s upcoming fourth quarter earnings report.

“The speculative activity in short-term calls might reflect the recent talk about an alliance with Microsoft,” Ruffy said.

Such rumors have been rampant since Google Inc. recently fortified its lead in the Web search market by taking a 5 percent stake in Time Warner Inc.’s AOL Internet unit.

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times cited what it called speculation that Yahoo had rebuffed an $80 billion bid from Microsoft as too low.

Did you see that? Eighty billion dollars! I can’t quite wrap my head around that amount! According to Microsoft Watch, the software giant currently has about $40 billion in cash.

There’s too much to consider if such a merger were to take place that I won’t even bother unless it actually happens.

Read: Reuters

Google Web Accelerator

Google announced on Wednesday the release of Google Web Accelerator,
beta of course. Basically it’s an Internet accelerator, designed simply
to make your web browsing experience faster. Here’s how it works:

  • Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
  • Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
  • Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
  • Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
  • Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
  • Compressing data before sending it to your computer.

As other have noted
however, the application also makes heavy use of Google’s servers, and
could allow them to collect some pretty interesting aggregate data on
the surfing habits of web users. Is that a good or bad thing? Who
knows. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to tie it into their advertising
network. Or maybe they’ll ignore it completely. At least they don’t
track you specifically.