The Net isn’t about search: Yahoo
p2pnet.net news:- Beleaguered Yahoo, being sued for allegedly releasing information which led to Chinese dissidents being jailed, says the future of the web isn’t about search.
The observation is being interpreted as an admission that it can’t keep pace with Google, and it, “came during a conference at which many participants said that the traditional model for getting information from the internet – using a browser to visit web pages – was outdated,” says Times Online.
“The future of the web is about personalisation,” Tapan Bhat, vice president of Front Doors, Yahoo!’s personalised home page, told the Next Web conference in Amsterdam, says the story. “Where search was dominant, now the web is about ‘me.’ It’s about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalised for the user.”
But, “They’re basically admitting defeat,” Times Online has marketing consultant Deborah Schultz, who gave one of the conference keynote speeches, stating. “They’ve realised they can’t compete with Google on search.”
It also has Jeff Clavier, a managing partner at venture capital firm SoftTech, saying, “The problem with Yahoo! is that they’re trying to be all things to all people but they don’t do any one thing particularly well.”
Clavier said web personalisation will become much more sophisticated with the level reaching a point of “total freakiness,”.
Every personal detail, what content someone likes, the context they’re in, their location, the time of day and their behaviour, will start to become relevant in the way the web is used, he added.
However, asked to clarify his comments, Bhat told Times Online, “We’re not admitting defeat. Search still matters, but we need to be providing a wrapper around search to turn the info search offers up into something more useful.”
Also See:
dissidents being jailed – Yahoo in new China dissident lawsuit, March 31, 2007
Times Online – Search is history, says Yahoo!, June 4, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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