Fake Steve Jobs is rather more concise than me: The Borg-Yahoo merger won’t work. Here’s why. It’s like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they’ll run faster.
February 1, 2008
So Microsoft has tendered a bid to buy Yahoo! for $44.6bn. I understand that Microsoft has to do something to build on its web strategy/presence. No-one uses Live Search, Live Spaces, or any of the rest. (OK. About one percent of people do). To build up any future trade for advertising, web services or development platforms, [...]
November 30, 2006
Google Answers has been closed while Yahoo! Answers goes from strength to strength. The key difference between the two is that Google’s service paid vetted ‘experts’ to produce results, while Yahoo allows anyone to pitch in. The whole thing leaves a lot of questions. I’m not sure whether the stats prove an uncomplicated victory for social [...]
November 3, 2006
Not really Web 2.0 or web-anything, but interesting nonetheless. News on Wednesday that Microsoft is threatening to pull out of China because of human rights’ violations. The BBC quotes Fred Tipson, MS’ senior policy counsel, who says: “Things are getting bad… and perhaps we have to look again at our presence there,” he told a conference in [...]
September 8, 2006
It’s not important for you to know my name - Nor I to know yours If we communicate for two minutes only It will be enough For knowing that someone in this world Feels as desperate as me - And what you give is what you get. It doesn’t matter if we never meet again, What we have said will always remain. If we [...]
August 2, 2006
In what may be a PR masterpiece, the new Yahoo! corporate blog is nothing but self-effacing. My headline is theirs for their virgin entry. “Oh, yes, we’re going corporate. But please don’t hold that against us. It’s a good thing, really,” they go on to say. Signs are that this will be an interesting read. Major [...]
August 1, 2006
Stephen Taylor is the RVP and MD Search & Search Marketing at Yahoo! UK. Before Yahoo!, he was the MD of Overture Europe. I, on the other hand, am a little-known hack from South West London with a penchant for strong lager and pizzas. Stephen may also like those things. How are the new changes to [...]
July 28, 2006
Wondered about Yahoo! and China? Censored search results? Shopping journalists to a communist state machine? Here’s what a company spokesperson told me: “Yahoo! opposes the punishment of any person on the grounds of what may be called free speech. We firmly oppose that. However, we have to abide by the local laws of whatever country we operate [...]
July 28, 2006
Yesterday, I spoke with Mark Opzoomer. Mark was the MD of Yahoo! Europe between 2001 and 2003. Now he’s involved in a number of ventures, but I was talking to him about his participation with Garlik. Garlik is set to launch as an online privacy service later this year. The idea is that they’ll scour [...]
July 14, 2006
Here’s where you get to help me. What follows is a draft of a chapter about the dotcom bubble. What I am lacking is personal anecdotes, so I feel it’s a bit dry, though I do have a few to add in. Did you make a mint overnight? Did you lose it again? Did you [...]
July 12, 2006
Social networking is big business, as we all know. MySpace has now become America’s most visited website with 4.46% of all web traffic in the week ending July 8th, putting it ahead of Google Search, MSN and Yahoo!. Bebo has reputedly turned down an offer of $552mn for its network, (not true – see post [...]
February 4, 2008