Yahoo and Microsoft have gotten together.

Announced this morning, Microsoft and Yahoo have signed an agreement to join search forces in an attempt to end their irrelevance in that space. An oddly out-dated looking website has also been created to pimp the agreement here.

Some bullets:

• The deal extends for 10 years (which seems like far too long a commitment)

• Bing will drive search, algorithmically, but Microsoft has a 10 year license to integrate any existing Yahoo search technologies. So there's some potential there for a better combined product.

• Yahoo gets to sell search for both companies (although "premium" partners are specifically addressed).
  

• Self-serve customers for both companies will funnel through Microsoft's AdCenter interface, which needs (and should get) dramatic usability improvement.

Ultimately (and assuming the DOJ approves the deal) this is probably good for the public in general. My personal experience with AdCenter results has been pretty poor, but adding all of Yahoo traffic should certainly help (should be approximately 30% of total search traffic). If Microsoft is serious about competing with Google however, particularly in the self-serve realm, they will absolutely need to improve AdCenter. Otherwise this merger just creates larger "also-ran".

Yahoo and Microsoft have gotten together.

AOL and Google have broken up.

Google has sold it's 5% stake in AOL back to Time-Warner, for about a 1/4 of the original purchase price (the initial investment was 1 billion, the repayment was only 283 million). Not that this is really a surprise, as Google had already written down 726 million of that initial investment.

That repayment puts AOL's value at about 5.7 billion (based on share price).

Not sure what this will mean (if anything) to AOL's search partnership with Google, which has helped AOL command a 3% share of the search pie. The current deal runs until December 2010.

AOL and Google have broken up.

SEO = voodoo

And Google = the Devil/an autocracy/inherently evil

Some anonymous donkey with an obvious anti-Google agenda wrote an open letter to TechCrunch about how Google hates him, and needs to be regulated. It's a fundamentally flawed opinion however, because Mr. Anonymous seems to believe that Search is a Marketing tool. Not a discovery tool.

One of his many complaints seems to be that paid search results are based not solely on PPC bid, but also on click through rate. But, um...shouldn't relevance to the customer be part of the equation? Just because your company is willing to spend $35 to elevate your ad for the "Sham-WOW!" to me doesn't mean I want to see it. He even seems to argue that Google should be required to document for him exactly how he can get his ad to appear (organically and paid search) in the top 3. Which would render Google completely irrelevant to the consumer. Unless the consumer wants to see a "Sham-WOW!" ad everytime he searches.

Mr. Anonymous has a bit of an inflated sense of his own importance. And frankly, that of search in general.

His claim that "search is the dominant methodology for consumers to find what they are looking for" rings absolutely inacurate. Even if you shrink the playing field to just the Web...search is just one of many tools. Consumers use Yelp, for example, to find restaurants. Or Tripadvisor to find hotels. Or Travelocity/Orbitz/Kayak for airfare.

He also goes as far as to imply that Google cares SO much about him, that his search results might suffer if they were to find out that he's also engaged with Yahoo and Bing.

I get his frustration. SEM is WILDLY inconsistent. There seems to be little pattern to results for similar terms on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Or even the same term, on the same Search Provider, over different days.

I also like his attempt to make a case that small businesses aren't capable of promoting themselves without the services of an agency. Maybe that's his whole point. Maybe's he the Biz Dev Manager for a SEM company. Otherwise, he's just nuts.

SEO = voodoo

think Google Wave isn't going to be a big deal? (you're wrong)

So I finally watched the really, really long demo (below)...and Wave is hella cool (much cooler than, say...having a 9 inch stick impale your neck and stab you in the lungs).

In a nutshell, Wave is a web application that allows you to build collaborative discussions in real time, in an extremely customizable email/IM/stream format. One of Wave's more ground-breaking functions is that it will facilitate collaborative (and even concurrent) editing and a "playback" feature that will show the chronology of the changes made by everyone involved. It also allows for drag & drop attachments (pictures, links, other waves, etc) and includes neat features like contextual spell-check (which will correct correctly spelled words if they're incorrect for the context of the sentence, like 'two' for 'too').

I'm psyched for it. Although I'm not entirely convinced that it might not be too collaborative. From a user perspective, it seems like there's a risk that information changes too quickly, too publicly. I'm probably just more reclusive then most though.



visual goodness starts roughly at 7:30 (yes...it really is a 2 hour demo)

think Google Wave isn't going to be a big deal? (you're wrong)