Yahoo to drop Google, 1st Qtr 2004
 

January 14th, Yahoo announced in an interview with ZDnet that they would be swapping out Google for Inktomi as their primary provider of web search results.

Of course we've been hearing this for quite some time now but this is the first time that Yahoo has officially stated the obvious switch will actually take place sometime in the 1st quarter of 2004.

Interesting....

interesting...that could be any time now

It's odd because while I was in Vegas I noticed that they were no longer using Google exclusively, but its nice to get a formal announcement now from the company.

WG

This was in yesteday's NYTimes

The Coming Search Wars
By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: February 1, 2004

ALO ALTO, Calif.

AT the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last week, Microsoft, the software heavyweight, and Google, the scrappy Internet search company, eyed each other like wary prizefighters entering the ring.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, stated his admiration for the "high level of I.Q." of Google's designers. "We took an approach that I now realize was wrong,'' he said of his company's earlier decision to ignore the search market. But, he added pointedly, "we will catch them.''

The four top Google executives attending the forum, at the ski resort of Davos, were no less obsessed with Mr. Gates's every move. "We had many opportunities to see Bill and Microsoft here in Davos," Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague that was distributed to employees through an internal company mailing list.

Microsoft is intently poring over Google's portfolio of patents, hunting for potential vulnerabilities, Mr. Schmidt contended. And because Google is running its business using Linux - the free open source software that has become the biggest challenger of Windows - Microsoft is concerned that it may be at a competitive disadvantage. "Based on their visceral reactions to any discussions about 'open source,' '' Mr. Schmidt wrote in his e-mail message, "they are obsessed with open source as a business model.''

Get ready for Microsoft vs. Silicon Valley, Round 2.

The last time around, in the mid-1990's, Netscape Communications, another brash, high-tech start-up from the Bay Area, commercialized the Web browser, touching off the dot-com gold rush. The company told anyone who would listen that its newfangled software program would reduce Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system to a "slightly buggy set of device drivers.''

As it turned out, Microsoft - based in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, far from Silicon Valley, the heart of the nation's technology industry - was listening.

Mr. Gates, belatedly waking up to the threat that the Internet posed to his business, aimed Microsoft's firepower at Netscape and flattened his rival, which was later acquired by America Online and is now a shadow of its former self in an obscure corner of Time Warner.

As a consequence, however, he brought a federal antitrust lawsuit down upon his company, raising the specter of a Microsoft breakup. In the end, Microsoft escaped with little more than a requirement that it operate under a relatively mild court-ordered consent decree.

Today, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley, from venture capitalists and chip engineers to real estate agents and restaurateurs, has begun to ask: Will Google become the next Netscape?

Mr. Gates, who for more than a decade has promised - but not yet delivered - "information at your fingertips" for his customers, has decided that the Internet search business is both a serious threat and a valuable opportunity.

The co-founder and now the chief software architect of his company, Mr. Gates readily acknowledges these days that Microsoft "blew it" in the market for Internet search. Despite his early grand vision, he displayed little inclination to deploy software that would improve the ability of computer users to find information - until he saw the dollars in the business.

THAT opportunity fell to two Stanford computer science graduate students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who disregarded the industry's common wisdom that search technology would become an inexpensive, marginal commodity.

While the Internet's dominant companies fought one another over Web portals, the promise of e-commerce and access to providers like America Online, Google developed a speedy search engine that soon became almost a universal first step onto the Internet. It displaced earlier search engines because the technology invented by Mr. Brin and Mr. Page did a measurably better job in returning results that satisfied Web surfers' requests.

As a result, Google now has an immense number of users, with 200 million searches on an average day. That gives it a great advantage over its competitors, which are now trying to catch up.

"The system that has the most users benefits the most," said Nancy Blachman, a computer scientist and author of an independent guide to using Google (www.googleguide.com). "Microsoft faces a tremendous challenge because Google fine-tunes its system by watching how users adjust their queries."

Its a pretty long article and you have to subscribe (free) to read the rest
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/bu...l?pagewanted=1

It was supposed to happen over the summer, but they keep putting it off, maybe because it would be commercial suicide.

Inktomi search:
http://www.hotbot.com/default.asp?qu...rovKey=Inktomi

Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...ebmaster+board

Yes, results do matter.

I've heard about this for a while and have to wonder what the fuck Yahoo is thinking?

That's close to a year old news. They keep postpone it, but it will happen.

Interesting :thumbsup

Yahoo, just isn't what it was a few years ago... but interesting news indeed.

more paid spots on yahoo?

Yeah - the switch was "finalized" last summer, but nothing yet. Maybe they finally realize intomi sucks.

For one and two word search phrases Yahoo have been using their own mix of google,inktomi and their own since the Florida update of google.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=bla...t&cop=mss&tab=

these results havent changed for ages.

I noticed that too. So, os this so you can slowly see the yahoo serps become more irrelevant?

I think Yahoo are just ignoring google's current fluctuations and I think they will update their adult serps when they have more confidence in either Google or Inktomi results.At the moment I think Yahoo have the best results for adult search.
The other thing of note of course is that Yahoo traffic is mainly US traffic and their sales:traffic conversions, for me anyway, are far far better than Google's.

the official announcement

finally :)

Where the hell are teoma and vivisimo in all these machinations? I expected them to gain some prominence, but so far nothing.

teoma was bought by ask jeeves and taht pretty much doomed it.

I never understood why Yahoo just cloned the Google results.
What was wrong with the old model? 50 news sites a day with lots of content getting a ranking bonus, and then have the Google results as supplement?

They HAVE to have their unique blend of search results otherwise what's the point of using Yahoo.

When Yahoo does this - it will probably move more people to google.

Surfers don't know there is a difference between google and yahoo. Yahoo just has a stonger brand.

Wow, that is pretty damn nasty. Inkotimi definetely seems the easiest of the two to spam (not suprising whern you think about it), and even with Google's poor results for adult searches lately, I doubt Yahoo can even come close to matching them.

Yahoo really needs to swap out DMOZ. DMOZ is so shirty, words can not describe.

if some of you has experience with INK and wants to share thoughts drop me a message #142032164 later today (currently trying to figure my icq pass :glugglug )

I believe Yahoo bought Inktomi last March?

Yahoo is it's own directory - it's not DMOZ.

DMOZ does need to go though. It's past its time, abused, and corrupt.

Well duh...

They spent so much money buying out the other engines, they may as well put some use to it. Was wondering when they would make it official..

And also, those of you familiar with the supposed Google IPO due out in Spring 2004, well, that aint happening either. Google decided it's not the "right time" for it.

Yahoo is just pissed off because Google dropped their PR to 9.

I'd like to see this information of yours on google not having it's IPO. So many fucking stupid rumors on this board...

If you can honestly say google has been delivering relevant results lately you are a newb. Altavista results even look better than google trash.

Just read the UK times article on the IPO cancelation. I'm not sure if this is true or not as this doesn't seem to be news anywhere else but on this article. Time to research.

get your seo tricks ready.

this will make some changes

DUUUHHHHHHHHH... Yahoo has been paying Google for years for their listings. Google is a competitor. It's like Pepsi buying their product from Coke... just plain stupid.

Very interesting reading...

Google just won that "internet brand of the year" award.

Sounds real good when you say it that way.

"Yahoo.com drops "Brand of the year" results from their websites in favor of a sponsor paid for inclusion driven suckresults"

Time to read up on inktomi again. Been awhile.

Whether we like it or not there is definetlly more traffic coming from other search engines lately.A sure sign that people aren't happy with google serps.

Might be a good time to renew all of those $25 a year inktomi urls that are about to expire.

yeah - that shit sucks

???

the inkatomi bot grabs more almost a gig off one of my servers every month and I've never paid any money.

For some reason it spiders my shit like crazy.

Got any good listings or (better yet) traffic? If not, they are just spidering away your bandwidth.

yahoo dropped google results now
no blending
horrible serps

Their results are really messed up for me as well, its not pure inktomi and its definitely not google. From the looks of a few searches I'm willing to venture a guess it's some sort of combination of AllTheWeb, Inktomi and Altavista, all companies that Overture owns and in turn, companies that Yahoo owns. Any hypothesis as to which index is most dominant or theories you may have? I'm a little baffled since some searches are exact copies from Inktomi and some are direct from AllTheWeb, nothing seems consistent.

WG

I'm noticing that too, I'm sure it's only temporary, and until Yahoo! re-indexes its SERPs, the results will certainly be something to look forward to.

This is mostly Inktomi index:

http://search.positiontech.com/Inkto...y=porn&adult=1

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=por...t&cop=mss&tab=

Maybe yahoo may be using their own algo.

It's a very stupid move by Yahoo in my opinion. These SERPS suck and I'm not even saying that because my sites are not at the top. They just suck - plain and simple.

Seems all the google boys are crying.:Graucho
Me too.:(
i had sites that were in every search engine,alltheweb.yahoo and altavista and now they have all disappeared from the new Yahoo.
the funny thing is my mainstream sites are kicking ass there.

I think they already did, I'm getting more traffic from them now.. I love Yahoo ... hating Google now...

:1orglaugh
Yep.

I just got about 20 new number 1 listings in yahoo!
Don't know if they actually are worth any traffic yet, but time will tell.

WOOO HOOOOO.
:glugglug

+yahoo to me is the best traffic you can get.Mostly from US and converts real well.
Enjoy it!:thumbsup



while you can you bastard.until I find a way to spam yahoo.
:321GFY

my traffic has been going throught the roof since this morning coming from Yahoo



Woo hoo!

Yeah, my hits from yahoo went way up too.

same me, just had some success on google and then there is one fucking big drop...

I dont understand why google doesnt cuts the string to dmoz permanently.