Cu ocazia deal-ului Microsoft-Yahoo in privinta tehnologiei din spatele Yahoo Search, au aparut foarte multe analize pe aceasta tema, respectiv cum de Yahoo, unul dintre cele mai puternice branduri din online, nu a reusit sa mai faca succes.

Destul de dificil in a gasi cauza caderii. Pot fi gasite destule motive. Daca ar trebui sa gasesc un raspuns rapid, m-as duce exact la radacini si as spune: Yahoo este o media company iar pentru a fi mare in online trebuie sa fii o technology company precum Google.

Dar dupa cum spuneam, ar fi un raspuns care ar pune in prim-plan soarta, karma, evolutia internetului ... respectiv motive care nu ar tine de managementul si deciziile Yahoo.


De ce a esuat Yahoo?

Raspuns: au incetat sa mai inoveze.

Cred ca cea mai mare greseala a lor a fost data de faptul ca nu au investit in achizitia de noi startup-uri search-related. Avand ca asset noi tehnologii invaluite de un product design inovator ar fi putut reveni in forta. Yahoo era deja un brand puternic, dar a uitat sa inoveze ...iar pe online, atunci cand incetezi sa inovezi ... incetezi sa mai existi.

Sa luam ca exemplu Microsoft. in ultimii 2-3 ani, Microsoft a pregatit terenul lui Bing prin achizitii nu tocmai explozive, dar care in background au realizat fundatia noului motor de cautare.

Lista achizitii Microsoft legate de search:

September 28, 2008 - Greenfield Online - Search and e-commerce services
August 11, 2008 - Powerset - Semantic Search
April 14, 2008 - Farecast - Online search software
October 2, 2007 - Jellyfish.com - Search engine
March 9, 2007 - Medstory - Internet search engine

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Astazi mi-am facut timp sa citesc scrisoarea catre actionarii Yahoo, a CEO-ului si cofondatorului companiei, Jerry Yang.

Eu cel putin, nu mi-as dori ca Yahoo sa intre sub umbrela Microsoft. Yahoo cred ca are destula forta sa reziste si sa isi imbunatateasca serviciile. Deunezi mi-am facut un cont de email pe Live.com, am mai aruncat un ochi si peste alte servicii, am mai facut si niste search-uri pe motorul Live, comparand relevanta rezultatelor cu cele de Google si Yahoo.

Concluzia este urmatoarea: Microsoft habar nu are catre ce se indreapta. Nu are viziune, nu are directie si, cel mai important lucru, nu are o filozofie a ceea ce reprezinta internetul pentru ei... nu au nici un gram de personalitate. Microsoft isi cauta drumul, iar pentru a reveni au nevoie de GPS-ul Yahoo.

Sta Yahoo prost din punct de vedere financiar? A iesit pe minus in ultimul exercitiu financiar? Nu chiar ... i se poate reprosa doar ca nu a avansat la viteza dorita de catre actionari, actionari care au un apetit sporit dupa profit, nenatural pot spune.

Si acum ca am terminat cu refularea asta :), mai jos este disponibila si scrisoarea, pentru cei care inca nu au citit-o.

Dear Stockholders,

On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquire your company. As much has been reported in the press recently, I wanted to reach out to you personally to let you know why your Board of Directors, after a careful review by Yahoo!’s management along with our financial and legal advisors, believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantially undervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of our stockholders.

Most importantly, I want you to know that your Board is continuously evaluating all of Yahoo!’s strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our stockholders.

We have a unique combination of strengths

– Yahoo! is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in the world. We have over 500 million users (nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users worldwide). In the U.S., we are # 1 in many of the most used online services including personalized home pages, mail, news, music, shopping and travel. Because we have leadership positions in so many indispensable online services, users spend more time on Yahoo! sites than anywhere else online.

– Yahoo! is an attractive partner for marketers. Yahoo! is #1 in online display advertising, which represents 90% of the advertising inventory on the web, and we are also a leader in search marketing and a pioneer in the growing fields of mobile advertising and online video advertising. Through Yahoo!, advertisers can now connect with consumers on our owned sites as well as those of our growing network of partners including eBay, Comcast, AT;T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers, Forbes.com, Cars.com, WebMD and more.

– Yahoo! has the financial flexibility to execute our plans, thanks to our healthy cash balance, which exceeded $2 billion as of December 31, 2007, and our substantial operating cash flow, which we expect to grow double digits in 2009.

– Yahoo! has made important investments in our core computing infrastructure enabling us to dramatically increase the speed of our search engine updates even while handling vast and growing quantities of data.

– In addition, we have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidated investments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo! Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positioned in China, a market with enormous growth potential.

These assets–our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers, our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–are the core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.

We have a huge market opportunity - and are uniquely positioned to capitalize on it

The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billion in 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution - of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.

We are executing our strategy - and making headway

We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our business on our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers and the must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-term performance.

Starting Point Objective: Our goal is to grow visits to key Yahoo! starting points and properties, where users enter the Internet, by 15% per year over the next several years. We are the most visited site in the U.S., and we continue to grow - we experienced double-digit growth in U.S. users in 2007 on our Yahoo.com home page.

In addition to traditional starting points on the PC - including our home pages, mail, My Yahoo! and search, we are particularly excited about our growth prospects in mobile, the biggest emerging starting point in the world. Globally, there are twice as many users of mobile devices as users of personal computers, and mobile advertising is projected to grow substantially in the coming years. We have an important competitive edge as the number one mobile destination in the U.S., and we are building a superior mobile experience for Yahoo! users globally so we can further capitalize on this opportunity.

Must Buy Objective: We are working to make online advertising easier and more effective for marketers, opening up new ways for them to connect with consumers. We’ve successfully completed the global roll-out of our search marketing system, Panama, which improved the search experience for our users, boosted returns for our advertisers, and increased revenue for Yahoo!. Last year, we bought Right Media, an exchange that enables buyers and sellers of online advertising to come together. Another 2007 acquisition, Blue Lithium, brings us best-in-class performance marketing capabilities, complementing Yahoo!’s existing offerings for advertisers. We also integrated our search advertising and display advertising sales forces, creating a one-stop shop for all of advertisers’ online marketing needs. All of these - Panama, Right Media, Blue Lithium, and our combined sales efforts - complement and enhance Yahoo!’s existing capabilities and will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy and sell advertising online.

We are also creating a unique and valuable network of premium websites to serve our advertisers. We are making it easier for our advertisers to provide interesting and relevant offers to our users by combining advertising space on Yahoo!’s owned sites with that from a growing group of premium partners including eBay, Comcast, AT;T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers and many others.

As we reach more users both on our own websites and on the sites of our premium partners, and better monetize the ad space on Yahoo!’s owned and operated sites, we are striving to increase the percentage of total online advertising demand we touch from an estimated 15% in 2007 to 20% over the next several years.

These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more open technology platforms that will encourage the development of new applications and the involvement of third-party developers - and help enrich the user experience.

We have accomplished a great deal in a very short time - and we are focused on building this momentum

Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources to drive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities - taking important steps to streamline our organization and close down or scale back businesses that don’t support these critical growth initiatives. The fact is that we are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’s users, advertisers, publishers and developers - an important shift that is at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.

I want you to know that the Yahoo! Board of Directors and management team remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all our Yahoo! stockholders. This is a great company and we are moving quickly to make it even better.

Jerry Yang

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via Eduard

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La 0 zi de la refuzarea ofertei de 44.6 miliarde $, Yahoo a anuntat marti, achizitia Maven, un startup specializat in video publishing, syndication si, cel mai important, in video advertising.
Startup-ul se declara "synonymous with Internet television.". CEO-ul Hilmi Ozguc, mai declara intr-un post pe siteul companiei:

"When I co-founded Maven Networks it was with a singular vision that video would be critical to the future of the Internet,"

Valoarea tranzactiei este estimata la aproximativ 160 milioane $.
Se pare ca Yahoo si Maven au negociat aceasta tranzactie, inaintea ofertei ostile Microsoft. Tot pe tema psoibilei achizitii Microsoft, unul dintre actionarii majoritari Yahoo, Legg Mason Inc, declara prin Bill Miller:

"We think (Microsoft) will have to enhance its offer if it wants to complete a deal".

"We think it will be hard for (Yahoo) to come up with alternatives that deliver more value than (Microsoft) will ultimately be willing to pay"

Dupa cum se vede, Jerry Yang, duce o lupta destul de aprinsa in spatele usilor Yahoo Inc., cu actionarii principali ai companiei. Intrebarea este ce se va intampla daca Microsoft va plusa la oferta?

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Yahoo anunta suportul pentru X-Robots-Tag, taguri ce pot fi adaugate in HTTP Header.
Cateva exemple:

* X-Robots-Tag: NOINDEX -- If you don't want to show the URL in the Yahoo! Search results.

Note: We'll still need to crawl the page to see and apply the tag, so if you don't wish to have the page crawled, use robots disallow on robots.txt.

* X-Robots-Tag: NOARCHIVE -- If you don't want to display cache link in the search results page.

* X-Robots-Tag: NOSNIPPET -- If you don't want to display summary in the search results page.

* X-Robots-Tag: NOFOLLOW -- If you don't want Yahoo! to crawl links in the page.

Pe langa etapele obisnuite, webmasterii care cumpara linkuri pe alte siteuri, cu scopul de a influenta pozitia in SERPS, vor trebui sa verifice si headerul paginii respective.

Tot cu aceasta ocazie, Yahoo Search anunta un update de index si algoritmi. Legat de modificarile din SERPS, este deschis un thread pe WebmasterWorld.

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