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Google Businesses The Almighty Buck The Internet IT

What Can Yahoo Do To Compete with Google? 218

Posted by Hemos from the first-mover-advantage dept.
ryanjensen writes "Jay Currie over at Tech Central Station has an article up about Yahoo's pending entrance into the AdSense advertising market, and outlines some things Yahoo (and MSN for that matter) can do to compete, including: Paypal payouts, revenue share transparency, rewarding quality (but small) publishers, and offering an alternative to "keyword bids" for advertisers." It should be noted that Yahoo has already been fighting Google on this front - Overture, owned by Yahoo!, has been running an Ad-Sense like program for a while.
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What Can Yahoo Do To Compete with Google? More

What Can Yahoo Do To Compete with Google?

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  • A few thoughts... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by maotx ( 765127 ) <{maotx} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:00AM (#11931327)
    I started using Yahoo! around 1998 when a friend in school told me about it. It was a nice portal with an extensive set of yellow pages, a messenger protocol, free webmail, and a chat program. Eventually the more I used it the more I became interested in Google as Yahoo! at the time was powered by Google. I eventually completely switched over to Google because of its clean, quick interface. I only use Yahoo! for my spam account and occasionally messenger because some people I know strictly use Yahoo!. Occasionally if Google doesn't return my expected search results I'll use Yahoo!, sometimes with success. As a search engine I'm really impressed but their is a few things they could work on for improvement.

    • Clean up its portal or offer a simple search site without any excessive links.
    • Quit tracking every damn thing I do on their site
    • Stop sending me specific advertisements based on where I go instead of what I search
    • Quit favoring select commercial companys in Yahoo! Mail to bypass the "Bulk folder".
    • Clean up their Privacy [yahoo.com] policy.
    Seriously though, has anyone read their privacy page? It's worse than AOL's AIM TOS.
    To quote a few of their policies:
    Yahoo! automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, and the page you request.

    Yahoo! uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients. aka "Sell your habits as an anonymous client to advertisers

    These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners.

    The list goes on and on. That is the main reason I try to stay away from Yahoo!.

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1. They do have a simplified search page.
      2. Dunno about this, I've never noticed it/found it a problem. Log out and turn cookies off maybe?
      3. Sending where now?
      4. I've never noticed this, I only get stuff I've signed up for legitametly, in my non-spam folder, as I expect it to be. If bigger commercial companies are honest (and they usually are) there's no problem here.
      5. You think Google is all that different? A little better but still not saintly.

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Suburbanpride ( 755823 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:07AM (#11931366)
      Clean up its portal or offer a simple search site without any excessive links.

      you mean this? http://search.yahoo.com/ [yahoo.com]
      Admitedly the front page is messy, but I know lots of people who would complain if they have to navigate through a couple of sub menus to get to what they want. I Wouldn't mind the cookies and ads if it knew extacly what I wanted. (finace yes, fashion no)

      • Even http://search.yahoo.com feels messy to me compared to Google. If I'm trying to search, I don't care about news. Or my email. So please don't get me two big boxes containing both. Admittedly, you can click the "X" to make those two boxes go away... But even when I enter a search term and click "Search", the list of results is much more bloated in Yahoo than in Google, imo. - Yolego
        • Even http://search.yahoo.com feels messy to me compared to Google. If I'm trying to search, I don't care about news.

          Then why don't you tell them so [yahoo.com]? I think some constructive feedback would help. Believe you me, I totally agree with what you're saying.. and it'd be nice if Google had some competent competition (MSN Search? hahahah) that mirror Google's minimalist approach.

      • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:3, Informative)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        I Wouldn't mind the cookies and ads if it knew extacly what I wanted. (finace yes, fashion no)

        You mean like this?

        http://my.yahoo.com [yahoo.com]

        Only been aorund for 3+ years...

        • More like 7+ years.
        • The amount of advertising that groups.yahoo.com users must endure is absurd.

          The original egroups customers, and customers who find their time valuable enough not to sit through interstitial ads to get to list archives detest yahoo, and I think I speak for many of them when I say that we avoid Yahoo when possible because of such obtrusiveness.

          You would think that someone in Yahoo would have the basic common sense to know that mailing lists are exactly the worst place to put the most obtrusive ads. No wo

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CdBee ( 742846 )
      It's odd - Yahoo had email long before Google Gmail, but never really made an impact. Google still doesn't have a messaging app in their offerings, but it doesn't seem to do them any harm.....

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:10AM (#11931383)
      Yahoo! automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, and the page you request.

      This is a standard Apache feature. Virtually every website logs all requests - Yahoo is normal here, not the exception.

      Clean search site? Done. [yahoo.com]
      • This is a standard Apache feature. Virtually every website logs all requests - Yahoo is normal here, not the exception.

        That is generally a normal operation for any webserver. I know my log I'll generally look it over and then delete it after a couple of weeks. What do they do with theirs? Sell it? Delete it? Use it just for research?

        Giving their other policies on ads it wouldn't suprise me if they sold it.
      • Except I'm still required to read some headlines for a country that has very little relevance to me. Go and look at Google again and see what minimalist means. (Of course I generally use my toolbar any way :)

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by leonmergen ( 807379 ) * <lmergen@gmaEEEil.com minus threevowels> on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:12AM (#11931391) Homepage

      • Seriously though, has anyone read their privacy page? It's worse than AOL's AIM TOS.
        To quote a few of their policies:
        Yahoo! automatically receives and records information on our server logs from your browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, and the page you request./b>

      ... exactly the same as apache does by default, except the cookies - oh boy...

      • Yahoo! uses information for the following general purposes: to customize the advertising and content you see, fulfill your requests for products and services, improve our services, contact you, conduct research, and provide anonymous reporting for internal and external clients. aka "Sell your habits as an anonymous client to advertisers

      So far no real privacy issues here; they are merely analysing the behaviour of anonymous clients, and/or target advertisements based on behaviour of clients; for example, never show an advertisement more than 5 times to each user (cookies) or try to find out how often certain links are clicked from certain pages inside their site...

      ... still pretty normal website administration here.

      • These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners.

      Ah, and here you do have a little point; this is probably based on your personal account information. Most likely this allows them to target for example German advertisers to German visitors...

      And please, don't say I don't have any solid proof that they are not doing this; there is just as little proof that says they do do bad stuff with your privacy...
      I'm merely illustrating here that this shouldn't mean all terror and shouldn't be a sole reason to stay away from Yahoo!.

    • Re:A few thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rdc_uk ( 792215 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:12AM (#11931396)
      You probably ought to have a few more thoughts about the google cookie, and what they are tracking (hint; the same information)...

    • What they can really do: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dsginter ( 104154 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:15AM (#11931417)
      The list is absolutely easy to someone with half a brain (not yahoo management, apparently):

      1) Innovate. While this might seem like a no brainer, yahoo hasn't fixed what is already broken on their own service for some time now. A good example of this would be their stock message boards, which fill with spam and garbage immediately.

      Try CSCO [yahoo.com] for example. It looks like a circus in that message board. Google will walk into this market because people are simply dying for something usable. Yahoo has dominance right now but they will lose that easily because they are satisfied with "good enough".

      2) Make all services open and extensible. Mainly, this means that they should stop requiring someone to open yet another unused email account in order to use their services. I already have half a dozen unused email accounts and I don't need another. It would be great if I could use my existing email account for access to IM, Yahoo auctions, etc. But I don't use these services because I don't want to bother with another email account.

      3) Promote an open web. VoIP is just now taking off. The world could use, for example, a free, standards based VoIP client for Windows, Linux, etc. Yahoo could gain many friends if they released a non-yahoo specific client. Certainly, they'll have to make money on it some how but I think that they could make more by keeping it open and not bundled with a service. Perhaps offer their own as a default, or whatever.

      The bottom line is that they need to adopt google's "do no evil" plan. I could go on all morning with examples.

      • Re:What they can really do: (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mcguyver ( 589810 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @02:21PM (#11934550) Homepage
        Innovate? Someone should tell that to Google.

        Here's Google
        -AdWords
        -AdSense
        -search appliances
        -Google News - generates no revenue
        -Gmail - generates no revenue
        -Google Labs - generates no revenue, includes sets, maps, video, suggest, answers, sms

        Here's Yahoo and all these things generate revenue
        -Overture ContentMatch
        -Overture Paid Search
        -Auctions
        -Mail
        -Travel
        -Personals
        -Re al Estate
        -Finance
        -Autos
        -Music
        -Fantasy Sports
        -DSL
        -etc

        If anyone needs to catch up, it's Google. For all Google's technological greatness, they are extremely dependent on AdSense in order to survive. MSN is coming out with contextual advertising. Yahoo already has Overture and will be releasing Yahoo's version of an AdSense competitor. AdSense was a surprising success for Google that put them in the leagues with the big boys but that's still one product. Google needs to pull another rabbit out of the hat if they expect to keep up with Yahoo.
    • I totally agree about the portal interface. I can't find a damn thing because there's so much stuff going on.
    • The list goes on and on. That is the main reason I try to stay away from Yahoo!.

      I too have a Yahoo account since 1994. I'm a webmaster. Every site that I have ever built did collect information just as Yahoo does. I'm pretty sure most webmasters also collect that information, and use that information to better select advertising or push offers to the visitor.

      • We track you 10 ways to sunday
      • We know where you came from
      • We know which state/city/country you came from
      • We show (or do not show content) bas
      • Making a profit I have no problems with what-so-ever.
        Making a profit through ads or subscriptions I have no problem with what-so-ever.
        Make a profit by monitoring where I go, how long I'm there, keeping a record of what I search for, and then selling that to who ever will pay your price I have a slight problem with.

        This isn't about making a profit but selling my interests and habits.

  • What they can really do... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:00AM (#11931330)
    ...is clean up their homepage. There is so much going on on I get scared just looking at it. Who can digest that much info? You almost need a search engine for the Yahoo homepage.
    • Google can do that [216.239.59.104]. That's where they're lacking! ;)

      Personally I do not mind the Yahoo home page. They do have a search page [yahoo.com] which is clean and used only for searching (like Google, really) while the main home page is the portal page, offering links to everywhere else.
      Also I do not think it is cluttered; full of information and links, maybe, but everything does seem to be in a nice neat order instead of strewn throughout the page.
    • I rarely go to Yahoo! home page, but they do have "My Yahoo!", and really, nobody has a competing product as that!
    • There you go.

    • It's about the directory (Score:4, Interesting)

      by metamatic ( 202216 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @12:49PM (#11933345) Homepage Journal
      I agree. That's what drove me away from Yahoo.

      I used to use Yahoo all the time, but at some point they forgot that the reason everyone used them was the search directory. They started getting obstructive towards the people trying to get listed in the directory, and dmoz.org was launched as a result, pulling away a lot of users.

      Then the default was changed for the Yahoo home page, so that when you entered a search term, instead of getting a nice useful list of annotated directory entries, you just got a typical search engine response--except not as good as Google's. Away went thousands more users. I gave up too, as it wasn't at all obvious to me how to find the directory that used to be there, but I could easily find dmoz.org.

      Now it seems as if they've un-hidden the directory via "tabs" on the home page. Unfortunately, it's still crippled. You enter a term in directory search and it gives you a page of search results you didn't want, and at the top a couple of links saying there are "related" directory entries you might be interested in. Call me picky, but if I request to search X, the site shouldn't respond with Y and say "Oh, and by the way, you can also search X".

      So you click the links to go through to the directory, at which point you discover that it's pretty puny compared to dmoz.org (compare [yahoo.com] and contrast [dmoz.org] searches for a random topic).

      If you try to add a link, you discover why the Yahoo directory now sucks [yahoo.com]: they basically offer no ability to add links in a timely fashion unless you pay them money. In other words, they want to charge you money for the privilege of helping them improve their product and compete with Google and dmoz.

      Google have never forgotten why people go to them. They're picky about what new features they add, and they keep the interface clean so that existing users don't suddenly find themselves lost. They're also careful not to remove functionality simply because it no longer fits the corporate strategy of the month.
      • So you click the links to go through to the directory, at which point you discover that it's pretty puny compared to dmoz.org (compare and contrast searches for a random topic).

        At this exact moment in time, Yahoo! returns an admittedly puny set of 8 matches:

        Sites 1 - 8 of 8

        • Link 1
        • Link 2

        On the other hand, dmoz just bluescreened:

        Search:

        skunks
        The Open Directory search is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later.
        No Open Directory Project results found

        I think I'd have to give the

  • Unless Yahoo makes some real headway in the VoIP and movie distribution fronts, they could never complete with Google.


    *sigh*
    • VOIP might be the keyword.

      I know that Yahoo were the first to start VOIP in Japan and they have established market leadership dwarfing all other VOIP services there, it's called Yahoo BB Phone.

      Depending on whom you believe it's got either over 1 million or over 3 million paying customers [recent articles returned by google bring up both these numbers, so I don't know which one is correct].

      The way this works is you get a set top box from Yahoo which plugs into your DSL and your phone line. Your telephone
  • Last time I ever used yahoo, I noticed that it was already using google's search system just it was displayed on there website and they had powered by google, now most of the users still use yahoo because its one of the first things they ever started using, now if the same search results can be obtained by both why would the common user every stray from google?

  • My thoughts... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:02AM (#11931339)
    Don't compete with Google! I've been a long term fan of Yahoo because it's the Jack of all trades, even if it is the master of none. One Yahoo account comes with a lot of features!

  • how about... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by isecore ( 132059 ) <isecore@NOSPAM.isecore.net> on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:03AM (#11931341) Homepage
    ...they stop sucking? The reason why I hate Yahoo is that they're still doing that stupid portal-crap that really annoys the crap out of me. I hate spending twenty minutes on a site looking for the right link - even though obviously the Yahoo execs still think that it's the bomb.

    If I spend more than twenty seconds on a site without finding what I'm looking for - I leave the site. My time is worth more than navigating some stupid portal.

    Seriously, it's 2005 now. Stop with the portal-crap in order to keep visitors there and start with some content.

    • Bad advice... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:21AM (#11931438)
      how about...they stop sucking?

      That's a bad advice... It costed me a boyfriend. :(

      • Wow (Score:2)

        by tgd ( 2822 )
        Didn't know my ex read /.

        Hey babe, you left some crap of yours in my basement.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • What are you smoking? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cybrthng ( 22291 )
      Yahoo is the most organized "portal" on the net.

      If your doing research it is much easier to find what you are looking for on yahoo than anywhere else.

      Need a new car? Yahoo Autos, Need a new Job? Yahoo HotJobs, need to do some research? Education.yahoo.com

      Want to follow business, stocks, rss feeds, news, local weather, auctions, bank accounts, investments? My.yahoo.com.

      Want raw search? http://search.yahoo.com

      I'm not sure you even know what easy to use and customer friendly means. I can contact Yahoo
    • How about Google AdSense stop sucking? When it first came out, the ads were great because they were relevant, timely, and interesting, with links that almost always pointed straight to the page you were interested in. Now, many of the ads are obviously generated by bots picking keywords at random, and the links often point only to a site's homepage instead of the relevant page you want to see.

      Searching for anything will just get you EBay affiliate ads claiming to sell it, regardless of whether EBay does

  • My thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandstorming ( 850026 ) <<moc.gnimrotsdnas> <ta> <eesnhoj>> on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:03AM (#11931346)
    I've been using Adsense on a fairly small website with about 150 unique views per day. I am not their prime customer. What gets me though is the fairly (and increasing) occurences when clicked ads (and not public service ads) earn me 0 cents, or even 1 cent. Another issue is also with google I am required to make $100 before I get each cheque, any system that kept paying me every $5 or so would definetly get me switching!

  • concern. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CABAN ( 818466 )
    As an adsense publisher and an active member of the publisher community I can speak for us all in saying that our number one concern is that we are treated like numbers and in turn treated as a dispensable asset. Publishers can be making great money one day and banned from adsense the next for 'suspicious activity regarding click fraud'. Yahoo needs to show publishers that they appreciate our business. Also, setting a minimum CPC on my webpage would make me happy. Just have it default to my own backup ads

    • My experience with their customer service has been positive, not negative. I've sent questions to them and I always get a reply back in short order. They've come to me politely with problems they wanted fixed on my sites and they've always given me reasonable time to fix things.

      Eric
      See me mentioned in USA Today [usatoday.com]

  • Yahoo vs. Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:04AM (#11931354)
    I'm not sure Yahoo wants to implement an AdSense-like program. Is anyone else expecting some big blowout in regard to AdSense in the near future? The system appears (to me) to be so rife with fraud with Google having no idea how to combat it. Every monkey that knows how to spell "mesothelioma" is setting up a site hoping to cash in on the high cost per click.

    The costs per click used to be very high but as more and more scammers jump on board using various anonymous proxy servers to initiate fake clicks, the costs per click are plummeting pretty rapidly.

    To see various costs per click on Overture (you can't see Google's AdSense exact amounts) go to Overture Cost Per Click [overture.com].
    • well, google has an idea how to fight it. suspending and refusing to pay.

      however, they got no idea how to do that to only those abusing the system(so they'll end up with disgruntled webmasters who get shafted).

      • Re:Yahoo vs. Google (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:38AM (#11931524)
        I had a meeting with our Google rep on Friday, and they always tell me the same thing - "We have hundreds of PhDs working on this problem." I would like to hear the solution, not that they have people working on it.

        The problem is detecting the fraud. If you have access to thousands of open proxy servers throughout the world, it's fairly easy to write a program to maximize your clicks while keeping your click-through-rate below 1.7. If the proxy servers (or spyware'd computers) can't be detected as such then you can't tell if it's a real user or not.

        Just imagine what's going to happen when botnet owners that have access to 20,000 computers realize they can profit from their botnet by scamming AdSense rather than blackmailing online Casinos?

    • Well, they seem to be doing it. See my analysis of the Yahoo! ad program [ericgiguere.com] for more details.

      Eric

  • Yahoo's Web Developer Kit (Score:5, Informative)

    by filmmaker ( 850359 ) * on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:10AM (#11931379) Homepage
    The Yahoo! Developer Kit [yahoo.net] has been very easy to use and very powerful. XML services are the future (or present, depending on how bloody you like your edge) of the web.

  • User chosen keyword targetting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NigelJohnstone ( 242811 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:10AM (#11931384)
    Yahoo could let you put per-page targetted phrases on the page. So in the advert code you could put "Chocolate Confectionary;Wooden Clackers;Pink Pajamas" and if Yahoo hasn't analysed the page yet it serves up an add for Chocolate Confectionary, Wooden Clackers or Pink Pajamas....

    There are lots of sites that generate pages on the fly, but Google can't serve up an ad until its parsed the page, so the first showing of that page (the most important) shows no adverts.

    Same with general news site, context analysis is terrible for general news, it would be better to let the new site specify the keyphrases on a per-page basis.

  • Google's more likely to become like Yahoo (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:13AM (#11931398)
    Isn't the real question "What can Google do to become more like Yahoo?"

    Obviously, no user of Google wants that to happen. But now that Google is a public company, you can expect them to wring every last drop of shareholder value out of their various and many properties:

    local.google.com
    maps.google.com
    images.google.com
    scholar.google.com
    answers.google.com
    catalogs.google.com
    www.froogle.com
    www.keyhole.com

    etc, etc, etc.

    In other words, expect the Google start page at some point in the future to look even more cluttered than Yahoo's.
  • It seems to me that the successful internet businesses - ones whos product is the internet itself so to speak - will all wind up looking alike. Pretty much like the early visions for the portals too. 1 place to go to find Movies, Music, News, Games, Chat, Ecomerce (VOIP?). AOL, MSN, GOOGLE, Yahoo, whoever manages to survive, and of course at some point these technologies will be so commonplace in the market that their survival will really become one of marketing and finding a steady usergroup. (Slashdot

  • Make me WANT, not HAVE to view ads. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jbarr ( 2233 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:18AM (#11931426) Homepage
    Yahoo turned me away long ago because it insists on using flashy, annoying, intrusive, and irrelevent ads. Plain and simple, Google got it right: Provide targeted, non-intrusive ads.

    Frankly, I find Yahoo's ad presentation to be annoying at best. I visit pages for the intended content, not the ads, and yes, ads often pay for the content. But, present them in a way that insults my intelligence, and I'll walk. Instead, present them in a way that makes me want (not have) to view the ads, and you have me at hello...
    • Not sure what your talking about but anywhoo, i'll take your bait and run.

      1. Searches are sponsored ads, just like google.
      2. Portal content is much more organized, familiar and standardized - much better than Google.
      3. The ads aren't just garbage. If your looking for hot dates in the singles section you see singles ads. If your looking for cars in the auto section you see auto ads.

      I find it laughable that Yahoo light years ahead of Google in content & design & integration & features & ease
      • Try browsing through the messages of any Yahoo! Group [yahoo.com] and you'll see exactly what the parent poster is talking about. Yahoo randomly interrupts your viewing of messages posted on their groups with massive animating, flash ads. It is quite hard to miss and is very annoying. You never see that with Google Groups and get much less intrusive ads.
        • Yeah, but remember Yahoo groups is actually easy to use and USEFULL. Google groups "you get what you pay for".

          That gmail interface makes 0 sense for google groups . I would rather deal with the banner ad on yahoo groups or use firefox to block them out.

          It's funny how you portray "intrusive" and use something that is less usefull based on that interpreation.

          You can always buy you way out of the ads if you are so inclined as to use the service.
    • I almost never directly visit a YAHOO! page (although i did visit the yahoo.com front page just now to see if it is as cluttered as much as people say) for that very reason. Plus, for those times when I do visit it (e.g. when I am following links to things on yahoo), I have blocked all the really annoying ads (FlashBlock for mozilla readlly helps with the worst offenders)
  • Yahoo's main page is too busy and often has annoying DHTML adverts (or did last time I used it, I've not used it for a while for that reason).

    They need to reduce the adverts, simplify their main page so they offer more service and less junk.

  • Selfish request: Usenet (Score:3, Interesting)

    by harmonica ( 29841 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:21AM (#11931442)
    Provide a service similar to Google Groups. It can be of value even though the last 20 years are missing.

    Unfortunately, not many people care about newsgroups, so this probably doesn't make business sense.
    • Even Google doesn't care about Usenet any more. Search for any topic and you'll see tons of Google Groups [google.com] (not Usenet groups) interleaved with the Usenet results.

      Google has therefore "embraced and extended" Usenet. Is that good thing?
      • Yes, that's one of the reasons why I find the idea of a competitor like Yahoo! compelling. "Classic Google Groups" can be accessed using one of the country TLDs like groups.google.ca, but that's not going to work forever, I guess.

  • Valid HTML for everything (Score:4, Interesting)

    by johnjones ( 14274 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:24AM (#11931450) Homepage Journal
    things they should do and not do

    o make damn sure that all their pages are valid HTML and make them small and LOAD FAST

    o the mail and calendar services are better than google dont worry about this

    o yahoo already have IM now they just need to offer VoIP gateways to countries (might be a problem but investigate)

    o better I mean much BETTER shopping sites in terms of the service they offer to shopkeeper's to publish wares (dont brand them as much in terms of yahoo domain)

    o look at offering flickr like service NOW ( build inside and look at buying at the same time whatever is faster )

    o For Publishers better feedback serve 3 differant kinds of targeted ads

    1/ html only (valid html no javascript)
    2/ non animated pictures (only jpg png gif)
    3/ animated flash or gif (kitchen sink)

    o For Advertisers make it easy to log in and better stats

    o remember for all pages even the tools make damn sure that all their pages are valid HTML and make them small and LOAD FAST remember 56k modem

    regards

    John Jones

  • Little annoying bugs, that persist for months and years are, in my opinion, a sign of rot within a company.

    From "SpamGuard" to RDF/RSS syndicating to "message boards" there are bugs and no place to complain about them...

  • It's very simple for a start (Score:3, Informative)

    by johansalk ( 818687 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:34AM (#11931497)


    For a start, focus on the user experience. A small but very significant example for me; google has its sponsored search results listed vertically on a semi-bar on the right out of the way of my eyes, whereas Yahoo has its sponsored search results right at the top and every time I do a search there's a mental effort, however brief, that requires me to check where the first unsponsored search result is in space on the page, and whether what my eyes landed on first is a sponsonred of unsponsored result. As such, Google is considerate and Yahoo is rudely intrusive to an extent that I loathe using it for simply this reason, no matter what else they do.

    Other examples abound; when it comes to search, Google seems to focus on the users, Yahoo seems to keep on the overture approach of focusing more on those who pay it, the advertisers, and annoying the users.

  • Obivous (Score:3, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:34AM (#11931500)
    Allow people to bid on ads based on the site's placement in the Yahoo directory.

    Sometimes Adwords ads get thrown off by content on a particular page. I was running a personal blog running google ads as more of an experiment than anything (I got like 100 hits a week, nothing huge). Once I posted that I had purchased my first home, all of the Google ads turning into cheesy mortgage broker ads, even though none of the other stories had anything to do with mortgages.

    Weighting website category classification & keywords would yield better results.

  • Yahoo already rules (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yetanothermike ( 824215 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:35AM (#11931505)
    Yahoo doesn't HAVE to compete with Google as they are already light years in front of Google in profit and revenue, visitors, hours spent on the site, etc...

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/yahoo.htm l?pg=2&topic=yahoo&topic_set=# Check the graphics with the article as they give the details on this.

    I'm not surprised that techies would think Yahoo has to "compete" as they all love Google but it's akin to asking how Windows will be able to compete with Linux.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:37AM (#11931515)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • There are still a few categories, such as the photography branch, that I still find handy. This may be habit but I the links seem somewhat recently updated and infrequently stale.

      Perhaps they could add an option to suggest new categories.

      Then vote on new categories.

      Then when a category hits a threshold, put some personal attention into it so it improves rapidly. That boost in topical focused quality of information could buy muchomany new clicks.

      That should be all tightly integrated with instant feedb

  • Well... (Score:4, Funny)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @09:43AM (#11931555)
    For one thing, they can get their own logo on Slashdot for stories about them instead of using Google's logo. Brand recognition, you know.

  • MUTP (Score:2)

    by sammyo ( 166904 )
    Implement MUTP, that way cool new protocol: Mint Under The Pillow. When each click gets me a small chocolate treat, that's the search engine I'm using!

  • get rid of the bloat.
    Remove the barrier of enforced logon.
    Widen the support beyond IE with no security.

  • Yahoo vs. Google stats (Score:5, Informative)

    by traffi ( 800888 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @10:23AM (#11931795) Homepage
    According to Wired (The UnGoogle [wired.com]):

    Yahoo spent $339 on research vs. Google's $139 (where it all went is a mystery though)

    Yahoo has 5,500 employees vs. Google's 1,907

    Each user spent 4.8 hours on Yahoo per month vs. Google's 0.6

    Yahoo gets 119 million unique visitors per month vs. Google's 72 million.

    (Data represents four quarters ending Sept. 2004).

    Although Yahoo may not be as geek friendly (and therefore Slashdot friendly I guess) as Google, it has a lot of customers and is the starting point for a large part of the web-surfing population.

    To me, this seems like very good leverage to squeeze into Google's main revenue source, targeded ads.

    • Each user spent 4.8 hours on Yahoo per month vs. Google's 0.6

      I'd hardly describe this as an indicator of anything good. This is likely the case because Yahoos interface is convoluted and annoying to trap you on there site for long stretches of time. Now google has the right idea, its not the quantity of time but the quality of time. Googles ads always seem relevant to what I'm looking for/at but yahoos doesnt really and I never feel like clicking on yahoo ads as they are way too intrusive. google makes

  • The subject of the original post makes it sound like Yahoo is down and out and what can they do to possibly compete with the monster that is google....in reality Yahoo currently makes more money then Google...sure Google has a slightly higher Market Cap, but thats only cuz people havn't learned their dotcom stock evaluation lessons. Yahoo already has more tools to compete with Google, at least financially. Yahoo has many more "properties" that could bring in revenue, most of them being in the content aren

  • my.yahoo.com (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Quill_28 ( 553921 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @10:32AM (#11931869) Journal
    Does google have anything to compete against yahoo and its my.yahoo.com ?

    It's nice.
    • I'm surprised no one else mentioned that. I use my.yahoo.com as my browser's home page and have for years. It's a single page with my local weather forecast, stock quotes, local sports scores, and news items from the sources I'm interested in.

      I haven't used Yahoo!-the-search-engine since I discovered Google, but Yahoo!-the-portal is actually one of my favorite sites.

  • So, we have an article about "Yahoo's pending entrance into the AdSense advertising market...", which is incorrect. But the Slashdot editor correctly points out that Yahoo's subsidiary Overture has been doing this for quite a while already.

    So basically this is not a story at all - why was this posted on Slashdot?

  • Clean up Yahoo (Score:3, Informative)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <.ervin.kosch. .at. .gmail.com.> on Monday March 14, 2005 @10:53AM (#11932043) Journal
    What does Yahoo do to beat Google?

    - Better Search Results
    - Clean up your directory - If the content hasn't been updated in a year, removed it from the directory or moved it to an archived listing.
    - Cleaner Interface - To much junk on the front page.
    - Better-directed advertising
    - Less intrusive advertising - I hate those pop-overs
    - Make it easier to add your site to Yahoo - I can get spider by Google in a matter of days; it takes months to get considered by Yahoo.

  • Pay FireFox Developers (Score:3, Funny)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Monday March 14, 2005 @10:57AM (#11932092)
    Pay Firefox developers to make Yahoo the default search engine.
  • The problem that I have with adsense is that ads tend to be for pages that are very much like the one users are currently on. I would like to be able to be able to suggest keywords to google that I think are related enough to be useful but different enough to provide some incentive for users to actually click.

    Just for example, say I have a page that is a mortgage rate calculator. Google will probably show ads for other mortgage rate calculators rather than for the more lucrative ads for mortgages themse

  • Why I use Yahoo!:
    • briefcase
    • groups
    • email (has access to other pop3 accounts via webmail)

    Why I use Google:

    • search web/usenet/images
    • aggregate news
    • email (would use exclusively if could access pop3 accounts)
    • maps (used to use Yahoo! Maps)

    I've had an account on Yahoo since the days when you had to bang two rocks together to get ones. Everything I use google for now I used to use on Yahoo. IMHO, google has just done a better job (except email) with these services. I briefly used Yahoo to host a website b

    • I've had an account on Yahoo since the days when you had to bang two rocks together to get ones.

      You had to bang one rock against the earth to get zeroes, and in this way you slowly filled out your account information.
  • Google isn't perfect. www.bergsresort.com can be found at yahoo but not at google. Try doing a search for "berg's resort" at both google and yahoo. It will only come up in yahoo. Though I have tried desperately to get google to crawl my site.
  • Change Geocities free webpages so the bandwidth usage is metered less often. You get 3gb per month, it shouldnt matter how the usage of that 3gb (or part thereof if a site uses less than 3gb in a given month) is used throught the month.
  • Of course, it's an old fashioned way, with SCO leading the way with new ideas like profit through litigation and customer alienation, but it might still work.

    An obvious enhancement to search engines would be to add a form of Wiki's disambiguation. For example, if I type "reading" into a search engine, am I after information on books or about the settlement of Reading? Further, if the latter, is that Reading, England or one of several American locations? A good example of something that should be complet
  • They must become the anti-google and take on the motto of "Do No Good." Sure most of the people on Slashdot may prefer Good over Evil, but I think there is a large enough population to support a company that takes a firm stance against all that is good in the world.
  • Yahoo is a lost cause.
  • Just did a search on something I picked out of my hat, "audacity" the opensource sound editor on both search engines.

    Here is the link that google handed me:

    http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

    Perfectly correct.

    Here is the link that yahoo handed me:

    http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=audacity/v=2/SID = w/l=WS1/R=1/SS=95832193/IPC=us/SHE=0/H=0/SIG=11kie a20m/EXP=1110912050/*-http%3A//audacity.sourceforg e.net/

    If yahoo thinks Im going to click on that they can shove it. A$$holes.

  • that limits their ability to innovate, compete and add valuable services and features people could find worth buying (read currency).

    Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc... mean different things to different people depending upon *how* they have chosen to use these free-portals of information/communication.

    Yahoo should tightly couple their systems to users by leveraging differing user's contexts in client-side interfaces. My personal *entry* point into Yahoo is at mail.yahoo.com. Many enter at search.yahoo.com. By
  • It should be noted that Yahoo has already been fighting Google on this front - Overture, owned by Yahoo!, has been running an Ad-Sense like program for a while.

    Overture has been running an AdSense like program long before AdSense was around. Overture began prior to 2001. Google AdSense began March 2003. Yahoo purchased Overture in Oct 2003.
  • has anyone else noticed a lot of problems with gmail lately? ie mail not delivering, site not responding, slowness, etc.... ?

    I realize that it's still in beta but I hope this is not a sign of things to come now that it has such a huge userbase, not to mention that people are using hacks to do things like run filesystems on it....

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