Friday, August 25, 2006
Search Engine Competition
Because of Google's popularity, Yahoo and MSN are playing catch-up on a very uneven and unsteady market not least because the two haven't figured out the magic of Google yet. These two websites operate on the philosophy that to be top, you need to be the best at everything and, in MSN's case, be in every possible online market. Google proved this wrong. Simplicity, ease of use, and minimal design has raised the company to the web-dominating power house it is today.
Yahoo almost had the minimal design going for it, but recently updated its site to look more modern. Its email remains one of the most used email sites in operation, but Yahoo Mail hasn't made the switch to an Ajax environment, which made Gmail so popular at first. Yahoo's news service remains widely used as well, and based on my own findings, outpaces Google News. What's strange is, Yahoo and Google seem to have a mutual peace between them, neither company seriously attempts to steal users from the other. And based on my own personal experience, Yahoo Publisher beats Google's Adwords.
Microsoft, on the other hand has gone out of it's way to be in every possible market online, but arrives to late to have much impact. MSN's social networking can never touch the popularity of Myspace or the more intelligent Blogger. You know, maybe all of MSN's ventures online do make some sense. They may be second rate at best compared to it's competitors, but with Vista and IE7 coming out at either the end of this year/beginning of next, Microsoft may finally be able to bring MSN services to the forefront by making them the default to Windows customers. It worked so well for them with IE, why not try it again, right?
Because of Google's popularity, Yahoo and MSN are playing catch-up on a very uneven and unsteady market not least because the two haven't figured out the magic of Google yet. These two websites operate on the philosophy that to be top, you need to be the best at everything and, in MSN's case, be in every possible online market. Google proved this wrong. Simplicity, ease of use, and minimal design has raised the company to the web-dominating power house it is today.
Yahoo almost had the minimal design going for it, but recently updated its site to look more modern. Its email remains one of the most used email sites in operation, but Yahoo Mail hasn't made the switch to an Ajax environment, which made Gmail so popular at first. Yahoo's news service remains widely used as well, and based on my own findings, outpaces Google News. What's strange is, Yahoo and Google seem to have a mutual peace between them, neither company seriously attempts to steal users from the other. And based on my own personal experience, Yahoo Publisher beats Google's Adwords.
Microsoft, on the other hand has gone out of it's way to be in every possible market online, but arrives to late to have much impact. MSN's social networking can never touch the popularity of Myspace or the more intelligent Blogger. You know, maybe all of MSN's ventures online do make some sense. They may be second rate at best compared to it's competitors, but with Vista and IE7 coming out at either the end of this year/beginning of next, Microsoft may finally be able to bring MSN services to the forefront by making them the default to Windows customers. It worked so well for them with IE, why not try it again, right?
