Google vs. Yahoo: A case of different strokes

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Google vs. Yahoo: A case of different strokes

By Saul Hansell The New York Times

Published: July 23, 2006

New York: When Google introduced its mapping service last year, it did something that made its competitors look antiquated (old 뒤처진). Users could click on a map and drag it to see an adjacent area 인근지역, a much faster approach than those offered by rivals.

 

But today, Google Maps still does not offer some of the pedestrian conveniences 보행자 편리 of Yahoo Maps or AOL's MapQuest. For example, it does not remember addresses, so users need to tell it where they live every time they seek driving directions from their homes.

 

Alan Eustace, a senior vice president for engineering and research at Google, said during an interview last week that the company had made a conscious choice to play down copycat 보방 features.

 

"We are trying to come up with something that is new and different that makes people say 'Wow,'" he said.

 

Do Internet users prefer services that are consistent and predictable, or are they more interested in the "wow" factor?

 

These differences in Web products define a crucial front 중대한 전투 방향 in the battle for online loyalty between Google and Yahoo, the major players in Internet searches.

 

Both companies see e-mail and other services as additional locations on which to display advertising. Even more important: They are a way to keep their brands in front of users in order to capture as many search queries from them as possible.

 

"The battle is about one thing: getting that search box in front of as many people in as many places as possible," said Jim Lanzone, the chief executive of Ask.com, the IAC/InterActiveCorp search service. "Search is the fastest- growing source of reverence online."

 

Yahoo is using its position as the leading Internet portal to help differentiate its search service, a distant No. 2 to Google. Yahoo has tried to keep the look and behavior of its digital services consistent, while retaining as much information about its users as it can, saving them time and personalizing their experience.

 

"Our philosophy is that being part of the Yahoo network is a huge advantage and a huge competitive differentiator," said Ash Patel, Yahoo's chief product officer. "When we build a product that takes advantage of the Yahoo network, it doesn't feel like an orphan."

 

Google has tied some products together - for example, combining its instant messaging and e-mail services on the same Web page. But those links are often created after a product is introduced.

 

"There is a trade-off between integration and speed," Eustace said. "We are living and dying by being an innovative, fast-moving company."

 

To some degree, the difference in emphasis when developing products defines the sort of customer that each service most attracts: Google appeals to those who prefer technological wizardry, even if it is a bit rough around the edges, while Yahoo aims more for those who want a smoother experience.

 

There are risks to each approach. Google tends to introduce a lot of new products and then watch to see what works. This has the potential to alienate users if there are too many false starts. At the same time, Yahoo risks being seen as irrelevant if it tries to put so many features into each product that it is always months late to market with any good idea.

 

"Yahoo has lost its appetite for experimentation," said Toni Schneider, a former Yahoo executive who is now running Automatic, a blog software company. "They used to be a lot more like Google where someone would come up with a cool idea and ran with it."

 

While Yahoo's processes, he said, have become too bureaucratic, it still is attracting an audience. "Google's products may be more innovative, but at the end of the day, Yahoo is pretty good at nailing what the user really wants."

 

So far, neither company appears to be able to make a significant dent in the position of the other.

 

"Google and Yahoo are both pretty hip new media brands," said Michael Zeman, the director of insights and analytics for Starcom IP, a media buying agency of the Publicis Group. "Yahoo stands for content and Google stands for search."

 

He said that research shows little difference in the demographic characteristics of the services' audiences.

 

It is hard to tell which tactic will ultimately win out because both companies are gaining users as AOL and Microsoft's MSN decline. Yahoo is the No. 1 site for e-mail and online news in the United States, while it is ranked second in instant messaging, behind AOL, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

 

Google, by contrast, is much less consistent. Its map service is now a very close third behind Mapquest and Yahoo. In two years, Google's Gmail has grown to having 8.6 million users in June.

 

That is not bad in a market where people do not switch e-mail addresses casually. But during the past year, according to ComScore, Yahoo added 11.8 million e-mail users, more than Gmail's entire user base.

 

Moreover, some of Google's products are languishing. Its Google Talk chat software had only 44,000 users in June, according to ComScore. And its Orkut social networking service had 279,000 users in the United States, although it is popular in Brazil.

 

Yahoo's social networking service, Yahoo 360, had 4.7 million United States users in June. That is not a small number, but the service is tiny compared to the 52 million people who used MySpace, which was acquired by News Corporation last year.

 

Yahoo's difficulty in gaining traction in social networking is especially troublesome for the company, because it has made a big bet that contributions from users will help differentiate its offerings from those of Google.

 

During the past several years, Yahoo has also devoted so much of its resources to building up its search business that it has been slow to improve many of its other offerings. This has allowed Google to gain the initiative in areas like e-mail and maps.

 

"Google is simpler, more focused on real and basic customer needs, with some exceptions for their experiments, and less focused on some of the fads driving Silicon Valley today," said Phil Terry, the president of Creative Good, a user experience consulting firm.

 

But Yahoo says it is trying to emulate Google's faster method of creating products.

 

"We may not know how everything fits together," Patel said.

 

But by creating partially completed products that can be shown to customers, "we can get insights from users and react to that over a three- or four- month period to put it all together," he said.

 

At the same time, Google is making some moves toward more closely integrating its products.

 

Sergey Brin, the company's co- founder and its president of technology, said during an interview last week that he has been encouraging engineers to develop their ideas as add-ons for existing Google products, rather than as stand-alone services.

 

With this approach, Brin said, Google can take advantage of the users it has, rather than trying to build new followings for each new offering.

 

"It's getting hard to follow all the different products," he said.