Did Yahoo! make the right decision with letting Microsoft power their search? Or did it simply give up on search too soon?
Sound off in the comments below!
(It’s too early to tell, but at least one person may be a bit bitter…) ;)
-Krishna
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Yahoo’s site has been awful for the past decade. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but I don’t think it could really hurt.
I think it might be a case of too-little-too-late for Microsoft and Yahoo on the web search front honestly. However, I think Yahoo handled it well. The thing I think Mr. Yang was trying to do was to ensure that Yahoo still would maintain its corporate identity which it is doing while working in partnership with Microsoft. However, they have made the change too late. Yahoo is slowly going into decline. They are closing many of their earlier features because they can’t seem to get them up to current standards. They seem to be focusing on their mail service but again it cannot touch GMail especially when it comes to spam filtering. So although I agree that for either Microsoft or Yahoo to take on Google they have to work together, I just don’t think they have the muscle to get it done. For example, last week someone tweeted something about finding what they wanted with Google before Bing’s background image finished loading.
@Jason R. With all due respect, that is FUD. Bing actually returns (quickly) video results that don’t even show up in a Google search, replete with mouseover previews.
I wouldn’t take anything “tweeted” seriously.
@Jason
I’m quite sure that Bing has its benefits and I don’t take everything tweeted at face value or I’d have a bunch of other problems.
The fact still remains that Yahoo, who had the potential to be the industry leader fell behind and became stagnant, and Microsoft, who didn’t really pay attention to the Internet really until Google started coming out with ideas that specifically targeted Microsoft’s products, have joined forces probably too late.
Honestly, want to know the reason I use Google for 99.9% of my searches? Because it is the easiest to get to. It is integrated into my Firefox browser as the default search engine. I’m sure Bing is a good search engine as well but why should I take the time to load a site when I can just go over to my tool bar punch in my request and hit enter.
Tell you guys what. I’ll see if anyone has added a Bing plugin for the Firefox browser search bar and I’ll use it for a few weeks and I’ll let you know what I think of it compared to Google.
Back in my college days (library science), we thought Yahoo! was superior to those so called ‘search engines’ because there was a human at the controls determining if a link was relevant or not.
For the last five (?) years now I’ve never used Yahoo! once (except when they got a hold on Flickr) They’re reputation is lost and I think it a real shame.
Wel so much for nostalgia, back to today’s world: Great comic once again, Krishna. Thanks!
Cheers,
Patrick
thanks, Patrick! :D
I’m more of a PC guy than a Mac, but I recognize that Mac makes better software than Microsoft. I wonder why Apple never developed their own search engine?
As far as Yahoo – I used their search engine once. That was enough to let me know I needed to use other search engines.
In what way is Mac software inherently “better” than Windows Software?
I just searched and there is an Firefox add-on for Bing….I just loaded it and have added it to my list of search engines I have to choose from in my tool bar…Here is the URL;
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10434
When last I checked (about 3 weeks ago) Bing was incapable of even finding MS Knowledge Base articles; articles which Google happily returned when given the same string.
What does that say about Bing’s capabilities if it can’t even return it’s owner’s own pages?
It all depends on what you are looking for….Bing for things like that…no….(and not that unusual for MS….shoot, even Vista does not allow MS Updates without your permission…it doesn’t trust them…ha)…..Though I have found Bing a good search engine for video searches, especially the way they are listed for you….Let’s face it, there is no “One Perfect Search Engine”, they will all have their good and bad search aspects…..and I for one will use the ones for the type of subject they are best for.
I haven’t tried Bing at all really partially due to inertia (although the Firefox addon might help with that) and partially because of their advertising. After the Vista debacle I’m not sure I trust MS to make a “decision engine”. As for Yahoo I don’t think they really had anything to lose.