It's not that long ago that Yahoo! controlled a far greater share of search ad revenue than Google, and it's quite clear that Yahoo! made a strategic mistake by using Google to power its search results (even though the US$191M it made from the sale of Google shares in the Google IPO must have made it seem like a stroke of genius at the time.)

Yahoo! basically built the Google brand in search, and then failed to react in time when the market changed to a self-service model for keyword search advertising.

Anybody can make a mistake of that magnitude, because it never feels that significant until you have the benefit of hindsight. Don't go conferring superpowers of precognition on Larry and Sergey.

alanosaurus

dude, you are not the clicking masses
a) you use firefox - not sure what US penetration is but it's sub 20% here in Europe
b) you know what referral codes are and you care about stripping them out
c) you know what cookies are and you care about stripping them out too
d) you know that text ads are ads and not algo (and you know there's a difference between ads & algo - and you probably also know the difference between commercial algo and "natural" algo)

99.9% of the population don't. They see pretty pictures and ads with the text they searched on in bold and they click, click and click some more.

Can you say "cha-ching"?

ouster

Doesn't that mean that a lot of eggheads and hangers-on with rich mommies and daddies are going to fuck up royally at your company over the next few years?

Seriously, the hiring strategy never made sense to me, although they seem to have gotten along well with it so far.

So far.

*Actual Google Recruiter Quote

CaliforniaCajun

@starbreiz- unfortunately GOOG can get away with offering meager salaries because it's the 'hot company' of the year. however, it seems that internet advertising positions are really unstable and you can get the boot whenever. if you have a better offer, i'd take it.
as for the 20% time, it's really only for the engineers, not CSR's who are ad reps, who make a lot of money for the company and do basic customer support. nope. those CSRs work long hours, only to get promoted to make about 5K more annually, and have to compete with all the other ivy league grads getting hired to do exactly what they're doing. they lure you in with parading the free food! free massages! ski trips, etc! but then you start working and realize it's like any other office job except way more cut throat and in the freaking boonies- i mean, mountain view, really? i'd take a job in SF that would probably pay double any day.

allstar444

starbreiz

raincoaster

* block ads via firefox
* strip referral codes from blogs by typing the main address of a company and doing a search
* when bounced via tinyurl.com, I copy the information I need and clean out my cookies and then go forward
* ignore text ads altogether

I do.

Fidel on the Roof

I asked my interviewers if they actually used their 20% time. All but one said they did not. The one guy who did use his 20% time only used it to try to switch out of a crappy group into a better one.

Dvivian

the_gdude

mozzer

By the way, I hate those current tv ads you have in valleywag.

mandarin

Alaska Miller

dalejo

dalejo

This isn't broadcast TV in 1970. Hasn't that business model kind of pr oven to be ineffective?

MagBas

If you can't recognize success, you'll never know if you reached it or passed it. The good ol' boys at Yahoo slammed right past it long ago, and are now desperately trying to pull a bootlegger with the 'General Jerry' before Sheriff Roscoe P. Ballmer catches them this side of the county line.

Wabewalker

mandarin

Keymaster

Yahoo has had high traffic ratings all along. Oddly enough, I think Google really picked up back in 2000 when people started noticing search results coming from yahoo.google.com.

growhappy

Time to buy some Dec 08 puts?

Fidel on the Roof

It Must Be Take a Worm for a Walk Week

yawnster

MagBas

w00zy33