Why Does Yahoo Want to be Like Google? - A Matter of Focus
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It can be argued that the difference is there for historical reasons. Yahoo’s interface has always been busy, as were the interfaces of many of the other early search engines. I suppose they were afraid that they would bore their users if they didn’t present an interface brimming with icons to click and services to try.
In many ways, Google’s interface was a reaction to all that busyness. It made its name as the place to go when all you want to do is search the Web. Users loved (and still love) the lack of distractions on the home page. Who needs entertainment news when what you really want to know is where you can find an article about skin cancer research?
But that may be part of the point. While both Yahoo and Google search the Web, they have somewhat different missions. Google sums itself up right in the first sentence of its company overview: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The company has explicitly associated everything it has done since its founding with search, in one way or another.
Yahoo seems to take a different approach. In its overview, Yahoo speaks of evolving “into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information, and make purchases. Today, Yahoo! Inc. is the Internet’s leading global consumer and business services company, offering a comprehensive network of essential services for Web users around the globe as well as businesses of all sizes.”
In short, for Yahoo, searching for and organizing information is really more of a means to an end. For Google, searching for and organizing information, despite all of the areas it has branched out into, is an end in itself. These are philosophical differences, which lead to somewhat different business models. Looked at from a certain perspective, Google’s branching into areas such as offering Web-based email could be said to be imitating Yahoo!
The truth, of course, is that neither company should be explicitly imitating the other one. They are competing in the same field for many of the same customers, of course, so they will naturally find themselves trying to fill some of the same needs. But what Yahoo should be doing (and has been doing, if its recent strong quarterly results are any indication) is thinking about the best way to fill these needs that is in keeping with its own company mission. Yahoo will not regain its glory by trying to be a poor man’s Google.
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