The real difference between Google and Yahoo
Yahoo’s customer is the advertiser. Google’s customer is you and me. That’s why Google has been more successful..
“We have never been a search company,” Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s chief executive told the New York Times in August 2009. “Search was Yahoo’s origin story,” stated Danny Sullivan, a search engine expert who has followed the search industry since its early days. “To say Yahoo was never a search engine is like saying Superman wasn’t originally from Krypton or that Spider-Man was never bitten by a spider.”
I fully agree with Danny Sullivan. Yahoo started off in 1994 as a search directory. Its job was to help people find stuff on the Web and that was its main purpose for many years. Search is certainly what made Yahoo popular. “Yahoo, it’s more like a huge library or archive,” Jerry Yang told Fortune magazine in 2000.
Carol Bartz saying that Yahoo was never a search company is like a defeated army saying that they never wanted to win the war anyway. In fact, they didn’t even think they were fighting a war. So now that Yahoo has lost the war with Google, now that it has grown beyond its original purpose of being a search company, what does it want to be?
According to the New York Times article, “The biggest thing for Yahoo is increasing the number of pages people consume and slapping as many display ads as possible across those pages. “My fortunes are tied to my pages,” Ms. Bartz said.
This logic is why Yahoo lost to Google in the first place. At some stage Yahoo began to put the advertiser first. It stopped seeing customers as people it needed to help find what they wanted quickly. It fell into the trap of sticky marketing-keep them on the site as long as possible, show them as many ads as possible.
The Yahoo homepage started off as a straightforward directory of the Web and for many years it stayed like that. However, sometime after 2000 it began to get more and more complicated and advertiser-focused. By 2004, there were 255 links on the Yahoo homepage. It had reached a stage of massive, overbearing clutter and pushiness.
“It had nothing to do with the user, but what Yahoo wanted the user to do,” Yahoo’s Tapan Bhat, senior vice president of Integrated Consumer Experiences told the Wall Street Journal in July 2008.
However, Yahoo did try to refocus. By 2006, there were about 170 links on the homepage. By 2007 it was down to about 140, by 2008 about 120 and by 2009 about 100.
This is the age of customer power, customer control, customer dominance. Today, the customer is not king; the customer is dictator. Google, so far, has put the needs of the customer, not the advertiser, first.
Yahoo and Google have the same advertising revenue model. However, Google isn’t focused on increasing page views and ad placements but rather on increasing relevance. It is focused on making ads useful.
In reality, Google is not a search engine; it’s a time saving device.
Jon says:
Added on August 16th, 2009 at 4:31 pmWhat an interesting observation. I definitely think we can all learn a thing or two about being “customer centric” by studying examples like this.
Susan Greene says:
Added on August 16th, 2009 at 4:35 pmVery insightful article. As you so eloquently stated, Google has won the battle for visitors because its focus was and is on how best to serve its customers not itself.
The case study of Google and Yahoo is one that plays out in many industries. Selfish companies that care only about their profits eventually alienate and lose their customers.
It’s actually very much like personal relationships. Friends who selfishly care only about themselves soon find themselves alone.
Tony says:
Added on August 16th, 2009 at 5:29 pmI very much agree with what is said in this article.
I would call Google a “problem solver” - people only Google when they have a problem - they may phrase it be saying they are looking for something or searching for something - but how many times have you thought “I have 15 minutes to kill, lets Google?”.
Most people hit Google when they have a problem - I need aluminium windows, I need a flight to Boston, I need a pink IPOD nano for my daughter.
Google is a problem solver - it finds me solutions to a need/want I have right now.
Search is all about people looking to have problems solved and websites need to be the solution to my problem and then communicate that fact efficiently to Google and the wider web audience.
Then, if you are lucky or clever enough to be displayed as an answer by Google and I click on your website, it then needs to tell me quickly that my problem is solved!!
Dave Culbertson says:
Added on August 16th, 2009 at 7:21 pmYour post is spot-on, Gerry. I’d add that taking their eye off of search is ultimately going to relegate Yahoo to a second-tier web property. I wrote about this on my blog:
http://lightbulbinteractive.blogspot.com/2009/07/with-its-bing-deal-yahoo-prepares-to.html
Jacqui - Keyword Intent says:
Added on August 17th, 2009 at 12:37 amWith any business, if you put people’s needs above revenue objectives, you create loyalty. It’s a simple premise. Money is a by-product of meeting and exceeding your customers’ needs.
Mike Simpson says:
Added on August 17th, 2009 at 10:36 amIt’s astounding that a web company as established as Yahoo still doesn’t get (or has forgotten) the single most basic thing about the web: it is a User-Led Medium. This is the reason why Google has become a verb and Yahoo hasn’t.
I try to impress on people that a good way to improve a site is to look at comparable sites that work well and copy their ideas. Not just because if it works for them it’ll work for you, but also because users value consistency across multiple websites and are more like to use your site if it’s similar to the ones they’re already familiar with.
If I was Yahoo I would be shamelessly aping Google to the very limit of the law. Maybe it’s pride that’s stopping them.
Brian says:
Added on August 19th, 2009 at 2:14 amI’ve been thinking this over and I’m not sure I agree. Yahoo lost its way by trying to be all things to all people — it’s still a much bigger web property than Google, who have search to themselves but trail on number of services, webmail users, photo galleries, and many more. As the saying goes, you can’t please all the people all the time. Google is only a synonym for search, and they’re still working very hard to expand beyond that into web services. Yahoo had a bewildering array of services much earlier, before Google was born, but couldn’t or didn’t make meaningful relations amongst its own products that it could promote or sell as a package. So I think Gerry is right regarding search, but the bigger picture is much bigger.