The NYT has a good background piece from Carol Bartz’s POV. Carol will be at Web 2 this Fall, so will Qi Lu, the man who will own the deal and the search fight with Google.
Yahoo Microsoft Deal Overview
The NYT has a good background piece from Carol Bartz's POV. Carol will be at Web 2 this Fall, so will Qi Lu, the man who will own the deal and the search fight with Google….
Thing is…Qi Lu was a Yahoo guy for a while. When he went to Microsoft, that was a huge deal.
Now that Yahoo is handing over the keys to let Microsoft drive…I’m reminded of the failure (and it was a MASSIVE failure) of the program I tried to get going at Yahoo during my almost 3 year stint.
And yes, this does mean the end of paid inclusion, which was stupid, idiotic…and I’m sure that, if Yahoo had been willing to hand the keys over to the guy before he walked…Yahoo wouldn’t be in this bind and, well, bending over for MS.
But it’s NOT a “search fight” with Google. It’s a “combine Page Views to increase costs for advertisers” fight with antitrust regulators.
If Microsoft and Yahoo! want to compete with Google, they have to leverage their content better in their search results.
Search is not about how many advertising dollars Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! can claim come from their pay-per-click systems. Search is about how many people visit other Web sites through their search results.
The organic side of the of the equation has been left completely off the table because it’s not going to be addressed to moving Yahoo!’s engineers over to Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer’s lack of search vision is no better a solution for anyone than Carol Bartz’ lack of search vision.