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Why The Future Of Search May Look More Like Yahoo Than Google

• beatgammit 14y ago
  This sounds like unabashed Apple fanboyism that hopes Yahoo will become cool again: "Even Apple is acknowledging that this is where the world is headed." "It makes total sense for Yahoo! to become the Apple of the web." I think it's more likely for it to go the opposite way, for Apple to become the Yahoo of the computer industry. Apple gained in the market because they made music devices a lot better than existing music devices. Then they noticed that phones sucked, so they made an awesome phone. Then they re-invented the tablet space using the principles that worked in the mobile space. They haven't made anything new since the iPad, only incremental updates to their existing devices. In the mean time, competitors have closed in and even surpassed Apple in some ways. Apple has just been spinning its wheels and raking in the money recently. People will eventually realize that there are real competitors now. That's basically what happened to Yahoo. Yahoo started as a search company, and added the "web portal" part the author speaks so highly of later. After a while, all resources were put towards better content, while search stagnated. Google steps in a shows the world that search makes a difference. This is what's happening to Apple. They've stopped innovating in hardware (where they shine) and started trying to get into software (new Maps app, iCloud, etc). If this continues, Apple will turn into Yahoo, albeit a bit better funded. Search may change, but I don't think it will look anything like Yahoo. That has already failed.
• greenyoda 14y ago
  "But then Google came along and exploited the fact that the Internet was growing too fast for Yahoo! to keep up." That's an interesting re-write of history. There were general-purpose search engines like AltaVista (1995) years before Google came along (1998).