david c.n. ma

Of Search Engines and Competition (Part II)

Read a very interesting article on the weekend on how Yahoo! blew it. No, they’re not really a search engine, or rather weren’t really a search engine, but thought I’d mention it given my previous musings on search engines. The article, I think, demonstrates pretty clearly how quickly things can change in the online world, and how the balance of economic power can very quickly change so that the one puny underdog can become the king of the junkyard, so to speak. Not that Yahoo! is exactly the picture of abject failure. But, relative to Google, they certainly have some catching up to do. And if Google isn’t very, very, very careful, they may very well be in the same position a few years from now – struggling to catch up with the brash young upstart that has come up with the Next Big Thing…