Yahoo's dispatch of Google heightens Net search war
Yahoo Inc. recently said it dumped Google Inc.'s popular search engine in the United States, the first punch in an escalating fight between Internet heavyweights.
Anticipating the blow, Google tried to soften the impact by releasing an update to its index of some 6 billion Web pages, images, and Usenet postings.
Once partners, the top Internet portal and the most popular search engine provider have become fierce rivals scrapping over how people access information online.
Searching the Internet has emerged as big business and soon will become a three-way race, as software giant Microsoft Corp. prepares to launch its own search technology.
"What's at stake is the starting point for many people's Internet experience," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc.
Also at stake are potentially billions of dollars paid by advertisers for placement in Internet search results. That market is expected to be between $2.5 billion and $3 billion this year.
"Search has evolved as the sweet spot of advertising," said James Lamberti, vice president of marketing solutions for comScore Networks Inc., a research firm. "There's huge amounts of revenue at stake."
Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel wants to make search integral to his turnaround of the once-struggling company. In addition to revenue from search-related advertising, the former cochairman of Warner Bros. wants to use the feature to tie together many of Yahoo's Internet properties into a "digital theme park" that users don't have to leave to find information elsewhere on the Web.
Google still powers the search engines on many of Yahoo's global websites, but Yahoo plans to switch to its own search technology worldwide soon, said Jeff Weiner, a Yahoo senior vice president. The technology was developed by Inktomi Corp., which Yahoo acquired last year. Buying Inktomi was one of several steps Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo took as it prepared to challenge Google, the closely-held Mountain View, Calif., company that demonstrated the draw of Internet search tools. Google.com attracted 60 million visitors in December.
Google, which is reportedly planning an initial public offering for this spring, said Yahoo's move was long anticipated. Google stole some of Yahoo's thunder recently by saying it had added 1 billion additional Web pages to its index since August, bringing the total to 4.3 billion, and 880 million images and 845 million messages from the Usenet bulletin boards. Yahoo's "announcement really doesn't have a material effect on our business from a financial perspective," said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice president of product management.
Yahoo's websites were visited by 111 million people in January, making it the most popular Internet portal, according to comScore. But Google is the leading search engine, with 35 percent of all US searches. Microsoft plans to build Internet search directly into the next generation of its Windows operating system for personal computers, which could give users a way to bypass Google and Yahoo's search engines altogether.Yahoo has built fancy search features into its shopping site, such as pulling up results with product photos and price comparisons beside them, and plans to do the same in its travel, finance, music, and job-listings businesses soon, Weiner said.
