Yahoo and Microsoft deal

Yahoo! was the war cry we heard recently, and not only by the Internet giant, but also from Microsoft. Ballmer has finally reached an agreement that allows Microsoft to compete somehow with the Mountain View giant.

Both companies have even created a website explaining (if it was THAT good, why should they?) the benefits of their joint venture. And the market has severely punished Yahoo, while Steve Ballmer tries to convince the public and press that Microsoft's new partner is getting a hell of a deal.

So what is it, then? Is it sooooo perfect and ideal or... there is something more hidden? Yahoo! shareholders clearly think that the deal is a bad choice, and that Mrs Bartz surrendered the technology position of the company. In fact, Larry Haverty, money manger at Gamco (which has 1.6m Yahoo! shares), expressed his concerns in a FT article that Yahoo might become a consumer media company such as Time Warner and might not still be independent in five years.

Therefore, Microsoft is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to power Yahoo! search to get a 12% of the ad revenues; Yahoo! is going to obtain a 88% of the ad revenues but will have bigger expenses because the infrastructure of the worldwide sales force and ad creation. Just to keep fighting and trying to get back some of Google's advancements in the multi-billion business that continues to grow.

Different escape clauses might indicate that they are not as sure as they seem... and in my opinion, the only winner in this scenario is Google. Antitrust issues that are making the Mountain View giant shiver might even disappear (look at PCWorld's views) because of the appearance of a new strong competitor. Will the Yahoo!-Microsoft allaince be able to stop the continuous rise of Google? Will they be able to be profitable AND compete in price AND gain positions in the search market share?

Maybe the landscape will change in the future, but not this way. Google will reign until Microsoft stops copying and innovates. Bing is not that good, guys. Change the search paradigm and stop wasting money... before it's too late.

BING, Bing, bing, BOOOM

Welcome back, Mr. Microsoft!!! It was long since we had some "little disagreements" regarding the magnificent, fast and optimized Vista, but I promise I will be again neutral when analyzing bing concept and results.

First of all, the "beta" concept has been copied from Google. Maybe it is only stating what sometimes is unavoidable: launching a product that is still in development phase. I would say that finally they recognized the risks (selling Vista beta 2 would have been an interesting concept), but there is a strong need to gain some momentum in order not to lose one of the last trains of Internet for Microsoft.

Analyzing precedents, Windows Live Search was... sorry, I cannot continue. Creepy, annoying (more than one left IExplorer because of it), slow, unreliable, commercial, not relevant... everything you don't want in a search engine, there it was.

Now bing tries to put some pressure on Google, hoping to gain market share and benefit from the huge (and growing) advertising pie of Internet.

IDC, in one of its studies, states that the worldwide Internet advertising spening was of $65.2 billion in 2008 and a predicted one of $106 billion in 2011. Not only that, but it is also more resilient to financial crisis, being more targeted and paid by CPC (Cost per Click - meaning not only attention, but customer attention and intention). For a more detailed study, the report from IAB & PwC

A perfect example could be the results of Q1 in US showed by PwC and the IAB, where decline in ad sales are compared between different media. While online revenues decreased just a 5%, real-life newspaper ads had a 29.7% decline.

Therefore, we are talking about a resilient, consistent $65.2 billion market with enormous growth possibilities. Talking about search share of that market, it would be a 45% in the US. Something around $30 billion worldwide!!!!

Well, now we know why Microsoft wants a powerful share engine. There is a strong business case behind it, let's see how they worked it out.
Graphically appealling, they Google layout has been copied - links at the top and the bottom, nothing else to give sense of simplicity, even the round letters of the name bing. Something nice is the changing and relaxing background photos, good for Microsoft!!!

What about search? Is it fast? I'm going to search FAST to evaluate both the quality and the speed of a bing search. And the results are.... WOW.

WOW. It's fast, no doubt. But... what about relevance? Developer web page, email of a Spanish telecom, an audio converter and a ferry are among the 6 most relevant results for Bing... WOW.

The image search, however, has some really nice features, being able not only to choose among size, but also layout, color, style and if people are present. Good system of thumbnails, by the way.

Disastrous News search and shopping is done through CIAO. Good initiative from Microsoft, trying to benefit from Ciao's experience and platform rather than building something that does not work - as happened with the rest of features, sorry to say that.

Why??? There is real need of replicating what Google does really well? Microsoft, stop wasting precious time and money and try to reinvent Internet search. The amount of information is reaching points where search is no longer enough, when recommendations and personalization will rule over the rest of searches. Amazon has significant advantage, but there are some start-ups as Strands that would help to shorten that gap with their recommendation engine. It is, in fact, interesting not only for Microsoft, but for many big players.

Future? Not much for Bing, that will BOOM soon...