Does Yahoo deserves a seat at the grownups table

August 26, 2009 by: nic

Yahoo still feels it has a trick or two up its sleeve and deserves a seat at the grownups table with Microsoft and Google. Google is experiencing its share of success by providing a diverse platform of Web-based tools, and iGoogle seems to be its attempt at providing a portal-like experience that ties some its other products and services together.So, Yahoo has surrendered the actual crawling and indexing of the vast interwebs to Microsoft Bing, but it can still put its own shade of lipstick on that pig. RaghavanYahoo’s senior vice president of labs and search strategy made remarks as much by stating that Bing may be providing the engine, but Yahoo is still free to create its own ‘search experience’.Yahoo was one of the leaders of the web portal charge that more or less helped newbie users closed between spoon-fed Internet providers like America Online and venture out into the wild internet without having their hands held. The Internet audience has matured beyond the portal.Yahoo has indicated a desire to jump back into social networking. It had previously tried to be hip and trendy with the Yahoo 360 service which couldn’t compete with the likes of Facebook and MySpace and was eventually abandoned. The new Yahoo mail interface offers some Facebook and Twitter-like features, and now Yahoo has announced the purchase of Maktoob.com, the Arab world’s largest online community. Social networking is filled with its share of Goliath’s as well and is not a market for the faint of heart…or resources.The one area where there appears to be innovation and room for growth and competition on the Web is with the robust applications that let users work productively from the infamous ‘cloud’. Google has led the way in that area with Google Docs and other products. Google has already announced Google Wave which will provide a Web-based communications and collaboration platform. The thing is, while there is room for competition, Yahoo doesn’t have the intellectual or financial resources to fight that fight with Google.Can the Yahoo ‘search experience’ be compelling enough to compete with the vast resources of Microsoft and Google?The products and services in Yahoo’s arsenal are barely distinguishable from those offered by its rivals, and trying to dress it up pretty to cater to a shrinking audience of users who rely on portals to navigate the Web is a dead end business model.