Yahoo! to drop Google

(January 6 2004) The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo! will stop using the Google search engine index for its regular search results, probably during the next couple of months.

Regular Pandia readers have been aware of Yahoo!'s plans for quite some time now. Yahoo! has bought no less than three search engines during the last year, and it would make no sense for them to keep using the technology of their main competitor.

The main question is, of course, why they haven't move away from Google already.

We know that they have been delivering test results to a small percentage of searchers, and that these results seem to be fetched from the Inktomi search engine (the one that also delivers data to MSN.com).

The problem seems to be that the search results are not good enough. Yahoo! knows that their searchers will flock to Google if the quality of their own search results drops significantly, and Yahoo! must be 100 percent sure that their results are just as good as Google's, or -- preferably -- better.

Yahoo! seems to stick to the idea of using Inktomi. The strange thing is that they already own a search engine that can compete with Google, quality wise, and that is the AlltheWeb search engine.

Before the merger with Yahoo!, Overture -- the owner of the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines -- was working on combining AlltheWeb and AltaVista into one new search engine. This new "AlltheVista" search engine could also be a strong alternative to Google.

It could be that the ultimate goal of Yahoo! is to combine Inktomi, AlltheWeb and AltaVista into one new search engine. The costs involved in developing search engine technologies are large, and it will make no more sense for Yahoo! than for Overture to run two or more parallel development processes.

Still, such a merger is risky. The development of these search engines ultimately rests on the competences of the people involved. When uniting the development teams you must develop a new culture that is just as strong and creative as the old ones.

That is not easy, when the development teams are located in different cities -- or continents even. The AlltheWeb development unit is in Norway!

You risk loosing a lot of talent this way, talent that might ultimately be absorbed by your competitors. Microsoft is hunting for talent right now, people to that are to contribute to the development of the new MSN search engine.

Yahoo! is now in a unique position. They have no less than three pools of talented people that can give Google real competition.

On the other hand, Yahoo! may also spoil it all, by failing to develop a new, unified development team that can bring forth the search technology needed to compete with Google.

That would be a tragedy, as it would mean than instead of getting a real alternative to Google, searchers would loose decent search engines like AlltheWeb and AltaVista.

Let's hope for the best.

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