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Platinax Internet News

Internet and business news for the UK online, by Brian Turner

March 01, 2005

Yahoo! celebrates 10 years, rolls out development initiatives

SPECIAL REPORT

Yahoo! celebrates its 10th birthday today, and to mark the event has not only opened its toolbox to developers, but also promises to expand it advertising network to small publishers.

As the BBC report Yahoo celebrates a decade online reveals, Yahoo! was originally started as a way for students Jerry Yang and David Filo to track their web interests.

The project became a commercial interest with $2 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, who had also helped fund expansion of Apple and Cisco. After additional funding, the company floated in April 1996.

Gary Price provides additional details of Yahoo!'s early development in Yahoo: Remembering The Early Days, where he tracks news of the project in early newsnet groups, articles, interviews, and internet archive cache of Yahoo.com from 1996.

When Yahoo! as a company first entered the stock exchange, it already had 50 employees, Now it has over 7,600.

Additionally, as reported in Wired.com's article The UnGoogle (Yes, Yahoo!), the company also boasts:

165 million registered users,

345 million unique visitors a month,

$49 billion market cap,

Revenue for 2004 revenue was $3.6 billion

On top of that, the company holds a consistant number 1 rank on Alexa, which in it's Yahoo! website profile page also lists a number of other interesting statistics, such as 41% of Yahoo! traffic being specifically for Yahoo!'s e-mail service.

And as reported in Search engine metrics: analysis, both Nielsen and comScore place Yahoo!'s market share in search at a steady 32%.

As part of the Yahoo! birthday celebrations, Jerry Yang pushed the boat out with a personal appearance at the New York Search Engine Strategies conference, in which Danny Sullivan was able to engage the Yahoo! founder in a question and answer session. Barry Schwartz covers the session in some detail at Keynote with Jerry Yang.

Developer Tools

Yahoo! have today announced the launch of its Yahoo! Developper Network. This API offers the ability to interface scripts with Yahoo! index in a manner similar to Google's API, but with an allowance up to 5 times that of Google's. More information on the technical specifics are cover in the Yahoo! Developer Network Documentation.

In Yahoo! Search Web Services Launch! high-profile Yahoo! staff blogger, Jeremy Zawodny posts more information on the announcement, and also provides a comprehensive range of sources covering the news.

The Yahoo! search blog provides additional information on the move. In Announcing the Yahoo! Search Developer Network and Search Web Services, the company states that:

rather than simply release a set of APIs that expose all of our "vertical" searches (web, image, video, news, and local), we thought about what it would take to create an ecosystem around these services.

The developer tools therefore comes presupplied with user community tools, not least a webblog, wiki, and mailing lists on top of existing reference material.

O'Reilly writer Paul Bausch, who wrote Google Hacks, is already the verge of releasing Yahoo! Hacks, with the book scheduled for release in Summer 2005. Announced in Yahoo! Web Services, he not only provides an introductory tour of core features, but also posts a sample application.

While Yahoo! openly state that they expect the release of developer tools to benefit themselves as well as the web community, it;s left to Richard MacManus to really try and prise the lid off the tactics behind the move. In How Yahoo's Web Services Support Their Media Strategy he highlights as key a sentence in the Yahoo! media release, and comments that not only is Yahoo! moving from a Web 1.0 company into a Web 2.0 company, but that they are trying to drive themselves as the hub of distributed content on the internet:

The more external sites Yahoo can get their content and brand onto, the more recognized and used their brand becomes in media circles - and therefore the more eyeballs they can drive to their Internet entertainment hub.

Overture rebranded - prepares for Yahoo Publishing Network

Yahoo! have also announced a rebranding of its advertiser publishing arm in Overture Services To Become Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions.

Overture is no more - welcome to Yahoo! Search.

CNet joins this news to the headline of developer tools being released, in Yahoo opens up its search toolbox to developers and point out that Yahoo! are trying to win over the web community, and remind us that Yahoo! originally paid $1.63 billion for Overture.

However, the rebranding seems to be being made for a direct assault on Google's AdWords/AdSense advertising program, which is the primary engine of profit for Google.

Waxy.org reports in Yahoo's Contextual Ads in the Wild that what appear to be contextual ads supplied by Yahoo! can currently be seen at The Ink-Stained Wretch - the blog of Yahoo!-Overture product manager Ken Rudman.

For example, in the entry The Jewish Haiku, contextual ads similar to AdSense can be seen - excepting that the code shows it to be supplied by Yahoo! servers:

http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js

This could present a real threat to Google's revenues, and push Yahoo! one-step ahead of their immediate search rivals, and also allow the company a clear head start over Microsoft, which is still signed up to deliver advertising from Yahoo!-Overture until July 2006.

More >> Read personal commentary on this news story in Yahoo! publishing

EDIT: Yahoo! release their version of the past 10 years of the web: Yahoo! Netrospective

Posted by brian_turner at 09:09 PM

January 25, 2005

Video search launched

Google and Yahoo! both released beta versions of video search today, starting what will ultimately be a very hard run race to conquer internet video & digital media.

Google video search comes in the form of a subdomain, while the Yahoo! video search exists as a tab on the usual Yahoo! search bar.

Interestingly, both search companies are taking different approaches. While Yahoo! is an archive of movie files found on the internet for keywords, the Google video search is geared towards tracking regional TV listings, and undoubtedly is gearing towards encouraging the search and development of search for TV broadcasting companies.

Some commentators have suggested that

Posted by brian_turner at 09:13 PM | TrackBack

January 19, 2005

Yahoo! sales & advertising breaking profits records

Yahoo! today announced Q4 profits of over $187m from sales in excess of $1 billion, after sales of stock including shares from Google.

Yahoo! indicated strong advertising revenue as a principle growth area, with TV and media companies especially moving increasing marketing budgets to search and banner advertising.

The news was welcome on the stock market, and Yahoo! shares closed at $37.86 on the day.

Posted by brian_turner at 06:06 PM | TrackBack

December 10, 2004

Yahoo! desktop search ambitions revealed

Danny Sullivan continues his habit of detailed analysis on search engine news, presenting possibly the most comprehensive appraisal of Yahoo! desktop search aspirations in Yahoo Details Desktop Search Plans.

Aside from detailing that the Yahoo! desktop search will be a licensed form of the X1, it will also be able to index more files than the current Google Desktop release. Danny Sullivan also suggests that the Yahoo! offering could be more consumer friendly, by its inclusion of such features as integration into the task bar menu. However, with Google's developer tools open to the internet, it can surely only be a matter of time before the basics of Google Desktop search are developed into a more consumer-specialised application.

Yahoo! desktop search is apparently due for public release in January 2005.

Posted by brian_turner at 11:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 24, 2004

Yahoo! UK hired investment banker

According to Revolution, Yahoo! UK have hired investment banker Salim Mitha as director of search "to maximise its investment in its search products".

Karl Gregory, formerly a marketing director at Alta Vista International, will apparently join him in the marketing arm of search.

I have to being a little confused by this, as the Yahoo! UK results suffer the same in Ask in simply returning UK domain names, rather than ajudging sites on their IP. So any UK company with a top level .com/.net/.org domain loses out and what you end up with is appalling SERPs.

So how does bringing in an investment banker and marketing director in help promote Yahoo! UK search, when the product - in this case, UK search - is so terribly flawed in the first place?

Perhaps these people are hired to notice that - but I won't hold my breath.

Posted by brian_turner at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 17, 2004

Yahoo! launches Premium Dating

Yahoo! has taken a step up in the online dating industry, with a new premium dating arm that now charges $35 per month, as opposed to its existing $20 per month service.

Apparently, Yahoo! believes the online dating industry to be worth around half a billion dollars a year, and already dominates about 20% of the market.

Recent high-profile advertising in the US by eHarmony, for a premium $49.95 service, apparently prompted Yahoo!'s response - though analysts warn that Yahoo! covers a consumer base generally outside of eHarmony's dating market.

Posted by brian_turner at 03:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 22, 2004

Yahoo! buys Stats e-mail

Looks as if Yahoo! like the model that Google use with GMail - Yahoo! have now bought up a private company called Stata Labs, which uses software to provide relevant context-based ads in e-mails.

As reported at CNet:
Yahoo buys e-mail search company

Yahoo has quietly purchased e-mail software company Stata Labs, in what could be an investment in a coming PC search tool to rival Google and Microsoft.
Stata Labs, a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif., sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo apparently bought the underlying technology of Stata Labs and does not intend to continue sales of Bloomba.

Posted by brian_turner at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2004

Jeremy Zawodny at Yahoo! Search

Popular blogger and Yahoo! engineer, Jeremy Zawodny, announced last night that he is moving departments - and will be working on the Yahoo! search team again.

While Jeremy makes a point of trying to open, it'll be interesting to see how informal Jeremy can keep his discussion of search tech. And whether he likes it or not, there will certainly be pressure for some kind of "limited marketing" of Yahoo! search via his blog.

However, that comes with the territory - so possibly the most interesting aspect of Jeremy's promotion is that webmasters would have an accessible figure from a major search company.

Whether that actually develops into anything useful and constructive in the long-term remains to be seen.

Jeremy has also contributed to the official Yahoo! blog, such as his recent coverage of the Web 2.0 conference.

Posted by brian_turner at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

September 30, 2004

Yahoo! search

Greg R Notess gives Yahoo! search a fairly comprehensive examination in his paper Review of Yahoo! search.

Definitely worth a read if you've been so focussed on Google for traffic, that you pay far less attention to other major search engines than you should - myself included.

Posted by brian_turner at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)