If even a small percentage of Microsoft employees take him seriously (and many at least read his stuff), then this will only serve to help Yahoo.
You see, having a company like Microsoft focus too tightly on defeating Google in whatever Google decides to do means they spend less time paying attention to us and more time trying to beat up one of our competitors.
What's not to love about that?! :-)
In his latest scheme, he'd like to see Microsoft and Yahoo "clone the Google API" (which Google API? That's not entirely clear.)
If Scoble really thinks that having a non-Google API is the real barrier to adoption, then I suspect he's not trying very hard.
Keep focusing on Google man... And bring as many of your co-workers along for the ride as you can!
Posted by jzawodn at November 03, 2005 12:18 PM
I usually agree w/ Scoble on things, but I have been disagreing w/ him on this whole Web 2.0 thing, especially the whole Google API stuff. I think he is wrong, MS should be trying to get better products and not copying everyone else.
I'm all for having a unified search API. That's why there's OpenSearch http://opensearch.a9.com/ .
Regardless, Yahoo!'s web search API is better than Google's... so there's no reason to replace it with a Google-clone one.
Seems to me that what 'clone the google api' is all about would be better described as 'remove the rate limiting,' and *that* is not such an easy issue to tackle.
What are you talking about? If they gain market share from Google, they also gain market share from Yahoo.
Your post makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Anon: huh? Explain that logic, please. Google is not Yahoo.
Come on man you can do better than that. You post will just attract scobles attention to yahoo and he will make another stupid post like this on yahoo next time.
Bad post.
Bad Jeremy. Bad Jeremy.
It's just good business to focus on the competition. Especially when the competition is doing as well as Google.
If you take away market share from Google, the market leader, you take away share from Yahoo. What isn't clear about that?
There's only one pie, if MS takes a piece from Google's side, that's less pie for Yahoo too. Clear enough?
Yeah, I thought I didn't need to explain, but I guess I was wrong.. go figure.
Gerald: exactly.
Jeremy,
Oh, if you think anyone at Microsoft actually listens to me, you might be suprised.
Oh, and I've met a lot of Yahoo employees lately too (I spoke at Google just after your CEO did too).
I think you guys are more than a little obsessed with Google lately too! Even if you won't admit it on your blogs.
I'm more worried about Microsoft.
You guys quite literally control the browsers on most desktops.
Um, define "control."
Can we force those users to upgrade? No.
Can we force those users to stop using Firefox? No.
Can we stop those users from going to Yahoo or Google? No.
Can we stop those users from changing their default home page to something else? No.
So, what, again, do we really control?
And, how, again, is that helping our business? I notice that Google's building a very rapidly growing advertising business, but MSN's was flat.
So much for the trappings of "control."
Control? I'll just pick the first defintion I find: power to direct or determine; "under control" And as for all the questions Robert answered "no" to, I'm pretty sure the answer is actually "yes" but don't think Microsoft is evil enough to do it.
As for Microsoft focusing too strongly on Google, is it at all similar to Netscape's focusing too strongly on Microsoft? We all know how that turned out.
how could one company be more obsessed with google than yahoo????? google practically writes the business plans for yahoo these days.
Robert S said, "I notice that Google's building a very rapidly growing advertising business, but MSN's was flat."
I just this week, for the very first time, immersed myself into MSN (My MSN, MSN Msgr, HotMail, Spaces, etc). I found the amount of advertising I encountered to be so grotesquely placed that it really detracted from the 'experience'. I don't think it was any more or less in volume than I encountered within the Yahoo! experience.
After reading your comment, I have to wonder if this may be one of the causes of the flat line situation you mention.
I also wonder how all the MSN portal segments can survive with editorial content that has no meat on the bone. It's all fluff, product promotion and Hollywood titillation.
Please realize I'm not anti-MSN and would love to see this all change for the better.
> how could one company be more obsessed with google than yahoo????? google practically writes the business plans for yahoo these days.
LMAO! So true!
Well, why would they clone the Yahoo Search Marketing API? In fact, how could they? Yahoo doesn't give out access to Overture's old API to just anyone (indeed, they take it away as well). So Microsoft has no comparision, really. Google's got pretty much everything available. All that's needed is an email address and you've got it.
Anyone know the URL to the YSM API? I'd be real curious to see what it looks like...
Yeah, I think Yahoo is more obsessed with Google than Microsoft is. When I was at Yahoo, I was recommending a product direction based on user needs,testing, feedback, and market dynamics, but the Director was just clueless. Then Google bought a company and the who direction changed... (sorry to be so vague - but this was true and frustrating)
I don't know what I like better....Dave Winer telling Microsoft that they cannot innovate or Scoble cheering him on. It's all good.
Thruout the yeasr Microsoft has attempted to make their services everwhere on the desktop. the browser is just an aspect. I don't even understand Microsoft was allowed to build in the .Net Passport inside XP and turn off the option to uninstall Windows Messenger. This obviously boosted Hotmail accounts and as a result the use of MSN.
"Can we force those users to upgrade? No."
>>> yeh just like you force the user to upgrade their Messenger when suddely a security issue appear. Oh yeh and of course the upgraded messenger suddenly has flash adverts and paid content. Also You can basically control everything at Windows Update
"Can we force those users to stop using Firefox? No."
>>>Microsoft IE patch blocking Firefox download:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1304494/posts
"Can we stop those users from going to Yahoo or Google? No."
>>>On every Messenger install you'll find prechecked box to install the MSN Toolbar, set MSN Page as default, set MSN Search as default search etc...No control whatsoever for a user paying attention...but so lame practice toward the average joe
"Can we stop those users from changing their default home page to something else? No."
>>> What is the preset homepage coming with windows XP already? Oh yeh MSN.com, and soon Live.com I presume
As jeremy explain in what is I think his best post is how no one is copying no one but how the competitors are ,most of the time, working on the same stuff at the same time because their market analysis come to the same conclusions. MSN Virtual earth came out like one month after Google earth, i don't think MSN came up with virtual earth in one month only...
now if Microsoft takes share away from Google, I don't really understand how that would affect Yahoo as well. Yahoo has proven to be quite creative and is not following Google in any way. Competition is good but it's not because company A "announced" a product that companies B and C are not working on it as well. Mediatizing something does not mean to rule the market...in fact, the more you promote, the more you estimate it's critical for you to have users... basically the more you promote the more the weaker you appear. And here Yahoo always had modest promotional campaign... simply because they have loyal users.
>> ... and [Yahoo!] is not following Google in any way
How can you ever consider saying such things? Look at the list of similar services from Google and Yahoo. In all cases, Google's version appeared before Yahoo's. (just naming a few examples).
Google Suggest - Yahoo Instant Search
Google Blog Search - Inline Blog results in Yahoo! News Search
Google Video Search - Yahoo! Video Search
And in the case of the following services, while Yahoo! already had a previous version before Google, clearly the highly innovative Google versions that appeared later made Yahoo to bring their improved (read AJAX) interfaces.
Gmail - AJAX Yahoo Mail Beta
Google Maps - AJAX Yahoo! Maps Beta
But here Yahoo! is making a mistake. Their new beta services are too much desktop. And the web is not meant to emulate the desktop. AJAX does not mean cloning desktop interfaces, but improving the user experience in web interfaces. If you've ever used Google Maps or Gmail, have you ever felt like not working on the web? Probably not. You feel you're still on the web, only a more responsive web.
I've never seen Google taking out some application as a response to a killer Yahoo app. If that would be so, then we would have a Google Flickr (Glickr, although it would be great).
Ernesto, I don't follow you. Starting with, er, web search, Yahoo has come out with tons of applications (see here for example: http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more/). In this list (which is only property or sub-properties, not even application level listings), Yahoo could claim to have been first before Google on almost everything.
You list 3 Google services that came before Yahoo, except that in the first 2 cases you are not even comparing apples to apples.
"I've never seen Google taking out some application as a response to a killer Yahoo app" -- really? What was gmail?
"But here Yahoo! is making a mistake. Their new beta services are too much desktop. And the web is not meant to emulate the desktop. AJAX does not mean cloning desktop interfaces, but improving the user experience in web interfaces."
>>> "too much desktop"?? What makes you think the web is not meant to emulate the desktop?? this is purely subjective. AJAX was developped just for this purpose! In case you haven't noticed every single new company that emergse from the new wave only have ONE thing in mind: to blurr those frontiers. And as I already said your presupposed ideas that one is following someone else are just not true. because you'll find such or such pseudo beta sites doesn't mean the company is actually the only one to come up with this idea. Most importantly it doesn't mean they were not influenced themselves by products released from another company. Do you really think Gmail's webmail was revolutionnary? that GTalk is an outstanding innovation? that Google's homepage was found nowhere else? that Google invented desktop search....? That makes no sense.
