Comments on: Semel, Yahoo, and the bet on media

By: (EMP) E-Marketing Performance » : » Did Yahoo! Lose the War for the Crown?

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 01:03:28 +0000

[...] cash reserve, or Google’s profit margins, but despite their current image problem they’re not down for the count- they’re profitable and they made it through tougher times like the dotcom [...]

By: Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:01:06 +0000

Google’s business model is “media” in the sense that it makes money as a middle-man, by selling ads, yes, of course. But the company does not create what anyone in “old media” would recognize as a media product; its only product is the technology that organizes search results and ads on those search results. (Plus it’s begun to be a software provider as well. It’s just supporting that software via advertising, not by selling licenses.)

Brin and Page did not wake up one day and think, “Let’s start a media company and sell ads.” Famously, they declared, “Let’s organize the world’s information,” and they wrote code to do so. The business model came along a lot later — right about the time Semel was taking over Yahoo, in fact. The driving force at the company was and remains technological problem-solving: an approach to Web business that, in 2001, was considered hopelessly naive.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:47:40 +0000

No, no, no, no! Google is the premier MEDIA company in the world. They are not a technology company. They do not sell technology to anyone (well maybe their little search servers, but those are deminimus to the conversation)! Google sells advertising; or more accurately, Google brokers advertising between the global audience and web sites. That’s a media model, not a technology model. The fact that they happen to have one of the best designed and most automated processing systems is good, but that’s not their business. It enables their MEDIA business model.
Technology companies sell technology to other companies.
What did Yahoo! screw up? They focused on creating content more than being just an excellent, pure broker like Google. Google doesn’t create content (well, they didn’t, but now they’re going more towards Yahoo!’s direction with the advent of Google Finance), they just are a very highly automated brokering system that connects the content creators and the audience.
That’s it.
They don’t make jack from any of their other activities outside of advertising.

By: Scripting News for 6/19/2007 « Scripting News Annex

Scripting News for 6/19/2007 « Scripting News Annex — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:24:02 +0000

[...] Scott Rosenberg: “To this outsider, Semel doesn’t appear to have been the Hollywood idiot some now see.” [...]