Google Market Value Tops Yahoo
Google market value surges past $50B, tops Yahoo so now they’re worth more in dollar value than Yahoo. That goes right in line with being worth more in search value and relevance. I’ve written before that Yahoo has their fingers in so many pies that they don’t have the necessary attention on search that Google does. Google buys small companies that offer services, software and add-ons which increase the value of the search experience.
Yahoo buys companies when they think they might be able to squeeze some extra bit of profit from them and add to the already confusing array of services which take an alphabetical list of 109 Yahoo “properties”, broken down by each letter of the alphabet.
Yahoo bought up all the available search “properties” within the last couple of years and, as I said in mid-July of 2003, “Well if it is a horse race, Yahoo may gain on leader Google if they are able to integrate their Inktomi and Overture (and by extension, Altavista and Fast/AllTheWeb) purchases into relevant search results that searchers trust. But all of the Jockeys on those horses will be whipping their charges toward the finish line with an eye to the winning purse.”
The fact is – Yahoo search is no better than Google now that they have bought up all real competitors. Referred traffic from Yahoo search results to web sites is still only one fifth that of Google.
The new MSN search may pose a threat to Google if they continue on their current path toward relevant search results. As of October 2004, Google market capitalization of $52 billion with shares hovering around $160 per share price, reflects the true value of Google.
Yahoo is kind of like a WalMart “Portal” that has everything under one roof with over a hundred wildly diverse “properties” that don’t contribute to search relevance or company value. Google confirmed today that they have no intention of becoming a portal, but instead intend to keep the laser focus on search that made them number one. This emphasis was underlined by CEO Eric Schmidt’s comment in the Financial Times of London, “We are not building a browser.â€
Now the market has confirmed what searchers already know, that Google is tops in financial relevance as well as search relevance.
Yahoo! Search has introduced a Google clone search page but who will see it? If you visit the Yahoo home page, you’ll see a couple of hundred links to all their services such as Yahoo Jobs, Yahoo Dating, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Movies Yahoo Stores, Yahoo News, Yahoo Web Hosting, “More Yahoo” and “Even MORE Yahoo” links near the bottom of the home page, blah blah blah, etc. But they’ve put up an elegant Google clone for their search page at search.yahoo.com. That nobody will ever see unless it is bookmarked or typed directly into the browser address bar!
Yes, you can search from the Yahoo home page and that is the most prominent of all the Yahoo’s glut of stuff, but I’ll bet they posted this spare little copy of Google’s home page to appease those who don’t want to wade through the rest of the mess to get to search. This placement means that only those of us that purposely AVOID their home page and jump right to search by typing http://search.yahoo.com/ into the address bar will find that page.
That’s the equivalent of MSN of course where you must type in http://search.msn.com to see THEIR spare search page. But MSN has at least kept some elements of branding in the design of that page, while Yahoo has made their page LOOK like the Google home page with a Yahoo logo. I can’t wait to see how they’ll integrate Yahoo Desktop Search into the browser … the same way Google did.
Yahoo enters the Desktop Search race how? Buying a company! According to Mike Grehan in a Pandia Search News article “Yahoo! may also be joining in the race for Total Search. They recently acquired the e-mail software company Stata Labs which sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments.”
Today the market has confirmed what searchers already know, that Google now tops Yahoo in financial relevance as well as in search relevance. Google leads and Yahoo follows. Google develops new technology while Yahoo buys it.
Google envisions & innovates but with Yahoo it’s more like “Yahoo see, Yahoo do” done by buying another company.
Mike Banks Valentine does Search Engine Optimization contact him at http://SEOptimism.com/SEO_Contact.htm Visit http://RealitySEO.com for Mike’s daily commentary on the Search Engine business. Subscribe to the RSS feed or join and comment yourself on the latest search news.
