Analyst is impressed by Yahoo's strategic focus
Forecasting Yahoo's future. Shortly after Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang said he would relinquish the title of chief executive once the company's board could find a replacement, Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk blogged about a visit to the company's California headquarters. She found herself impressed by its strategic direction.
I actually spent the day at Yahoo the last week of October and I came away refreshingly impressed by the ailing portal's outlook. I see Yang's departure as progress: a recognition that Yahoo has faltered of late and needs an aggressive new approach to right itself and take advantage of the still growing opportunity in online advertising. The notion of seeking new leadership embraces this aggressive approach to change and I think is an admirable thing for Yang to do in the name of the future of his company.
What impressed me during my Yahoo visit a few weeks ago? Their strategic focus. For years I have been haranguing the vendor for acquiring too many disparate properties and not making enough fast progress toward their integration. They announced to me two strategic priorities: Their APT platform, an ad management tool intended to provide a single technology for publishers and advertisers to manage all of their online media transactions; and their Yahoo Open Social strategy, an entirely new way of allowing consumers to collaborate with each other, port their social profiles around the Web, create content/applications, and in general just interact how they want to with each other online . . . all facilitated by Yahoo.
The question of the day seems to be: will Yang's departure queue Yahoo up to renegotiate with Microsoft? I have been a fan of this marriage from the beginning. But now I think Yahoo is in a much stronger position to take advantage of a partnership with [Microsoft].
blogs.forrester.com/marketing
The phone is listening. Google released a free application that lets iPhone owners use the search engine by speaking into their phones. The software returns results on the screen. Yankee Group analyst Joshua Martin explored what the instantly popular app means for Google and Apple.
Why would a user choose any other search tool until they offer something equal to or better than what Google has launched? Add in the aforementioned potential of voice to Gmail conversion (I'm hoping!) and suddenly more nails are being hammered into Yahoo's coffin. Speaking of which, sorry to see you go Jerry [Yang]. Rarely do we have a CEO with superpowers - no one had the ability to diminish shareholder value faster than you!
With rumors that Apple could be developing its own application for search, this is a shot across the bow for Google. No one will beat them on search. Not even Apple.
Could voice search be one of the killer apps for Android [Google's mobile operating system]? Could Google have made the application available on the iPhone to demonstrate how great Android will be if and when such technology is incorporated into its very core?
Only time will tell if Google will use such an application to build momentum for Android phones, but in the interim they will simply have to be satisfied with further dominating search.
blogs.yankeegroup.com
Free advice for start-ups. Microsoft blogger Don Dodge rarely misses an important conference, and earlier this month he was in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit. Dodge, based in New Hampshire, posted some notes from a talk given by venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins. Doerr offered some coping advice for start-ups facing the recession:
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