DISQUS

Adriaan Strydom · 3 years ago

Yahoo & MSN are less successful than Google in their respective global advertising strategies, because their original business models are very different to Google's. They are portals now exploiting search advertising, whilst Google started with search and is moving into everything they can use to serve advertising... Google's first consideration is "how can we best serve content that is relevant to what the user wants", no matter which vehicle they use.

Johan Bosini · 3 years ago

Hey Vinny, I agree with you 100%. MSN and Yahoo have been chasing Google for some time now. I think that further to your in-depth reasons though there is another simple reason for MSN and Yahoo lagging behind and it is nothing more than consumers wanting simplicity. Google is a search engine with other really cool functionality (if you choose to use it). MSN and Yahoo are portals (news, email etc) and have a search engine too (should you choose to use it).

Google has managed to keep things simple. Simplicity is both sacred and central to competitive advantage for companies like Google. This is just another reason I love Google so much. They also have allowed for people to choose what content they wish to see with a nifty site at www.google.com/ig. Microsoft is hot on their heels too with a funky customisable desktop style web platform called START. See www.start.com where you can have all sorts of RSS feeds and email and and and… Hold on, we are getting complicated already... back to the plain white page with nothing else but a search bar in it... www.google.com (Vinny in our case it will default to www.google.co.za ... smart people ... like you said)

Johan Bosini

Vinny Lingham · 3 years ago

Funnily enough - it seems that the Google Analyst report vindicates my analysis.

http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/...

Google is able to serve and target more business and individuals globally, because of their global perspective.