Google and Yahoo compared
John Battelle's SearchblogJohn Battelle's friday post forms an astute essay on the the differences between Google and Yahoo and traces the history and possible causes of those diferences:
"Yahoo is a natural media company - the company is willing to have overt editorial and commercial agendas, and to let humans intervene in search results so as to create media which supports those agendas. Google, on the other hand, is repelled by the idea of becoming a content- or editorially-driven company. While both companies can ostensibly lay claim to the mission of 'organizing the world's information and making it accessible' (though only Google actually claims that line as its mission), they approach the task with vastly different stances. Google sees the problem as one that can be solved mainly through technology - clever algorithms and sheer computational horsepower will prevail. Humans enter the search picture only when algorithms fail - as was the case with the 'I Love Jews' snafu mentioned earlier.
But Yahoo has always viewed the problem as one where human beings, with all their biases and brilliance, are integral to the solution. It's humans, backed by technology, who drive the 'also try' results at the top of the page (the process has been automated, but it is classic architecture of participation stuff: 'here's what other human beings find useful related to your search'). It's humans, backed by technology, who push Yahoo's internal content and commerce sites to the fore in the iY results."
He also makes some predictions as to how these fundamental differences will affect both Google and Yahoo in the future:
Google "will become your distribution sugar daddy. We'll be Switzerland - allow us to index your content, and when people find it through us, we'll enable you to sell it." Batelle gives an example: "search for something, let's say "usher," the actual content that Usher has created will come up in the results, and thanks to the distribution deals Google has cut, you can buy that content right there on the spot. Everyone gets paid!...Google, more likely than not, will attempt to come up with a clever technological solution that attempts to determine the most "objective"answer for any given term"
Should Yahoo also become a super distributor of media content... they'll figure out some way to index and distribute media content that is moderated by traditional market forces.
He concludes with a question: "one thing will be certain: Google will never tell anyone how they came to the results they serve up. Which creates something of a Catch-22 when it comes to monetization. Will Hollywood really be willing to trust Google to distribute and sell their content absent the commercial world's true ranking methodology: cold, hard cash?
posted by Jen @ 1:34 PM
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