Month: May 2008

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Initial Web 2 Summit Lineup Up, Registration Is Open

My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year's theme) and if you haven't gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000…

Web2Newlogo

My partners at Web 2 told me today that the new website is live, the initial theme is up and posted (I am very excited about this year’s theme) and if you haven’t gone before, you can request an invitation to come here. Last year we had nearly 10,000 requests for an invitation, so if you want to come (Nov. 5-7 in SF) please fill out the form asap. I review each request personally.

The first line of speakers is also up, and there is a lot more cooking. Initial speakers include Jack Ma, Anne Wojcicki, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Ken Auletta,

Richard Rosenblatt, Lance Armstrong, Ralph De la Vega, Paul Otellini, Mary Meeker, Padmasree Warrior, Kevin Johnson, Joel Hyatt, Mathis Wackernagel, Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla.

From the theme:

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Liveblogging: Yahoo’s Decker and Yang

After a funny film featuring nearly every luminary under the sun giving Yang and Decker advice (Buffet, Stringer, Zuckerberg, etc) Yang and Decker took the stage and Walt immediately asked them about the MSFT deal. Yang agreed that they could not get to a price, but that there were…

After a funny film featuring nearly every luminary under the sun giving Yang and Decker advice (Buffet, Stringer, Zuckerberg, etc) Yang and Decker took the stage and Walt immediately asked them about the MSFT deal. Yang agreed that they could not get to a price, but that there were other issues as well, regulatory is one that came up, but I can imagine others (ie, approach to open source, total installs of Outlook at Yahoo, etc.!).

What is the concept around the Google deal? Yang: We feel strongly about how we monetize search, but there is clearly a value gap between us and (Google), we want to make it clear to our shareholders that there are other untapped sources of value that should we want to tap that…could be significant…” We’ve conducted tests with them and we have some understandings…as to the level of discussion…we are uniquely positioned ….should anything be done (between Google and Yahoo) it’d be unique… yahoo has the ability to remain very competitive in the advertising space…the level and flexibility of how we might partner has not been well understood…(he doesn’t want to talk about it)…

What about losing search share? yang talks about Panama, over the last two years we’ve closed the gap against Google by quite a bit (in terms of pricing), now we’ve shifted our focus back to driving query growth, which is growing on an absolute basis. yes behind Google but we feel it’s about innovation and differentiation…becoming more open as a search platform (yes!) what we’d like to see…is us more aggressive …I feel the search game is pretty early…

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Don’t Give Up Lotus, er, I mean Microsoft!

Mike makes a good point here in response to Tim's point of view, and Tim counters here. It's a very interesting debate, one between two folks I've partnered with for some time (Mike's TechCrunch is part of FM, and Tim and I have partnered on any number of things,…

Mike makes a good point here in response to Tim’s point of view, and Tim counters here. It’s a very interesting debate, one between two folks I’ve partnered with for some time (Mike’s TechCrunch is part of FM, and Tim and I have partnered on any number of things, including Web 2, Make, and several sites that are also part of FM). So I’m a bit conflicted as I watch these guys debate.

However, one thing I will assert: Search is more than a subsystem of Web 2, as Tim puts it. I think search has become the interface to Web 2, and so I agree with Mike that Microsoft should not abandon it. It’s how we navigate the world of knowledge, and it’s way too early to say we’re done with the evolution of that navigation. But as Tim also points out: “a platform beats an application every time”. Damn right! That’s why I think Microsoft (or Yahoo) should innovate in search, as I pointed out here and here. If Google were to open its platform up, man, then it might well be game over. An open platform that has near monopoly share? Now that’s something to ponder.

11 Comments on Don’t Give Up Lotus, er, I mean Microsoft!

Is Microsoft Cashback the Future of Search?

As promised, I've posted some thoughts on Microsoft's Cashback program over at Thomson's Future of Search site. From the post: ….In essence, Microsoft has taken the affiliate model – where merchants pay channel partners for leads which turn into sales – and turned all of us into potential partners….

Ms Cashback

As promised, I’ve posted some thoughts on Microsoft’s Cashback program over at Thomson’s Future of Search site. From the post:



….In essence, Microsoft has taken the affiliate model – where merchants pay channel partners for leads which turn into sales – and turned all of us into potential partners. If it sounds like a crass play to buy your search allegiance, well, it is. But Goto.com was crass too, and it turned into a multi-billion dollar market, the ultimate expression of which is Google. So before you judge it, it’s worth thinking about a bit more deeply.

There’s no doubt that with Cashback, Microsoft is attempting to disrupt the search marketplace. But there are only a few axes around which you can do that. One, you can disrupt the presentation of search. This is very hard to do, but it’s happened before, and will happen again. Secondly, you disrupt the business model of search. And third, you can disrupt how search is created (ie, the secret sauce of relevance). There are startups along every one of these axes of disruption. But with last week’s news, Microsoft is focusing on the second one (business model). Unless, that is, you read between the lines. That’s when we see the beginnings of disruption along lines one and three as well. ….

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Weekend Update

Thanks for all the feedback on the new design. We're going to push it live this Sunday night and keep tweaking it, there were a ton of good suggestions and we can't get them all in at once. I prefer to launch and iterate, rather than try to get…

Thanks for all the feedback on the new design. We’re going to push it live this Sunday night and keep tweaking it, there were a ton of good suggestions and we can’t get them all in at once. I prefer to launch and iterate, rather than try to get everything perfect.

Secondly, I am going to work on two pieces of writing this week. Both will probably be posted in full at the Future of Search site, but I’ll summarize them here as well. The first will be a rumination on what the future might look like if a major like Microsoft of Yahoo opened its index fully (for a tiny bit of background, read this), and the second will be roughly titled “Is the Future of Search About Getting Paid?” That one will be my thoughts on Microsoft’s recent news and its deeper implications.

So if you have thoughts on either, let me know!

10 Comments on Weekend Update

A Brand New Searchblog

I started FM three years ago because of what I learned starting Searchblog. And today, FM is giving back to this site. One of our engineers, Ivan Kanevski, who along with many others has helped me troubleshoot the site in recent years, told me that he'd done pretty much…

I started FM three years ago because of what I learned starting Searchblog. And today, FM is giving back to this site. One of our engineers, Ivan Kanevski, who along with many others has helped me troubleshoot the site in recent years, told me that he’d done pretty much an entire redesign of Searchblog in his spare time. I looked at the comps and loved it. I was about to ask him to just push “publish” when I thought, wait a minute, I better ask my readers!

So here’s the comp. What do you think? I for one love it. But I said that already, sorry.

Brand New Sblog-1

45 Comments on A Brand New Searchblog