January 25, 2006

Good For You Yahoo!

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger � Cede search to Google?

Come on Yahoo. Steve Rubel is right. There is so much left to do it isn’t even funny and if a company discovers a better way to do search they can take share away from Google (which, yes, does have a monopoly share of the search market). I can’t find a ton of stuff on Google, though, the job simply is NOT done! Google hasn’t even tried to do good blog search yet, for instance. Technorati/Feedster/Pubsub kick Google’s ass, which is really sad cause all three aren’t very good at bringing you the best bloggers.

So I agree with the first part of this... there's so much to do, its not even funny. Where I immediatelly take an about face and state "EXCELLENT MOVE YAHOO!" is where Scobel and company suggest this was a bad move. Bad move?

Nope.

Let me put it to you another way...

The future of the search, isn't.

Still confused?

Yahoo!'s not. Neither is Google.

Why put all of that money into acquiring Blogger to then sit on it for all intents and purposes, as is, for a couple years if you were of the belief that in and of itself Blogger 2003 = Blogging 2007+?

It's not. So why push that direction?

If delivering the 'there's so much to do' pieces was really deemed as 'MISSION CRITICAL' in the here and now, with as much talent they now have on 'campus' (does Google have a campus?), don't you think they would have delivered by now?

As such,

Q: Why haven't they?

A: What's the rush?

We're not ready for the paradigm shift yet so to force such a shift now goes beyond *ANY* justifiable business logic. Take for example:

During his Microsoft years Adam Bosworth and his group of developer heavyweights built IE4, DHTML, the XML parsers and processors, the XMLHTTP object, etc... etc... etc..., delivered them.... and

7 years later the world caught up (in terms of both recognition, support on other platforms (XmlHttpRequest), and bandwidth capacity in regards to both high-speed internet access, and processor capability)... And gave it the name of a bathroom cleaner.

Given his position at Google, do ya think Adam Bosworth might be taking the "the web is not ready for this yet... Let's take the time to both build this to perfection and not deliver it until the web is ready for the next step." stance?

I personally can't say one way or the other, as I have no clue...

But it certainly does seem to make a lot of sense.

Speaking in terms of Yahoo!... They have the same level of talent on their 'campus' (same question as above?). They've made a very pointed effort to focus on recruiting folks like Micah Dubinko (W3C XForms Spec Editor) and Dave Beckett (W3C RDF Core and Data Access WG) who, while they undoubtedly have the ability to build a great search engine, are instead focused on XML data binding, presentation, and interaction, and HARD CORE semantic web core technology development.

Do you think Yahoo! might recognize something these other folks seem to have set aside as trivial?

Yep!

What Yahoo! just did (in my opinion, anyway) had nothing to do with conceding and everyting to do with pure and simple GENIUS!

Instead of pushing resources into areas who's shelf-life (in its current "text input box" form) has less than a couple of years left, they've instead sent Google a message...

The message?

"We get it."

"Ready to to take this to the next level?"

LETS GET READDDDYYYY TOOOO RUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBLLLLLE!!!!!!!!
---

"ba ba ba bapa bapa, ba ba ba bapa bapa, ba ba ba bapa bapa, ba ba ba bapa bapa, , ba ba ba bapa bapa, , ba ba ba bapa bapa, , ba ba ba bapa bapa,

"YA'LL READY FOR THIS?

"badup bapa bapa."

Things are about to get interesting in this space...

I'd stay tuned for this one for sure :)