Now that Yahoo has ceded its search business to Microsoft, it would be easy to call CEO Carol Bartz’s comment to The New York Times that “Yahoo never was a search company” a piece of revisionist history.
But is it really? Bartz followed up that comment by saying “[it's more like] I am on Yahoo. I am going to do a search.” While it’s difficult to say that Yahoo never was a search company (it’s deeply rooted in being one of the Internet’s first directories of websites and a search tool to find them), what it has been at least over the last 5-10 years is a huge and somewhat confusing schmorgisborg of content and services.
Supposedly, somewhere around 20 percent of the Internet population uses Yahoo as its search engine. But frankly, they’re not amongst Twitter users, Facebook (Facebook) friends, or social circle. The way they use the Web is different than the way I use the Web – they don’t necessarily have a Google (Google) toolbar installed, and they almost certainly don’t use Google Chrome’s “Omnibox” to do searches. Heck, most of them probably still use Internet Explorer (Internet Explorer).
If Yahoo’s CEO says most of its searches come from users who are looking for more information about something else they saw on Yahoo, I’m inclined to believe her. She certainly knows more about where and who Yahoo searchers are than I do. Hence, cutting costs and perhaps improving revenue by using Bing (Bing) for search isn’t necessarily the worst idea in the world.
Has Yahoo lost much of the luster that made it the preeminent Internet company of the 90s and early 00s? Absolutely. But are they completely clueless and giving away the farm for next to nothing? It’s too quick to jump to that conclusion. Bartz wants to build a business around page views and display ads; in other words, a media company and not a search engine. Getting people thinking that way is an important first step, even if the words used to justify it may be a bit Ballmer-esque.
Tags: 10 years, bing bing, carol bartz, ceo, explorer internet, facebook friends, google, heck, internet company, internet explorer, internet population, luster, new york times, page views, preeminent internet, revisionist history, search business, search company, search engine, search tool