leytonjay.co.uk

As soon I read that Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo! it set alarm bells ringing in my head.

Google is the de facto search engine for pretty much the entire planet, this makes them Enemy Number One for the aggressive business Goliath that is Microsoft.

I outline below my reasoning and why I believe the acquisiton of Yahoo! by Microsoft would be very bad news for the internet.

Google vs. Yahoo!

Google search results have always been honest, powerful, fast and representative of the ’state of the web’ at the time. With their well publicised expansion into mapping, email and soon mobile phones, Google now dominate web searching and advertising. Even the once great Yahoo! now fails to compete in any real sense, with Microsoft’s Live Search barely scratching the surface. In my opinion as a Web Developer who is very interested in Search Engine Optimisation it is as much a battle of effort as it is ideas.

Of the dozens and dozens of ’search robots’ or ‘crawlers’ that visit my site daily - Google makes up over 80% of non-human traffic. Google now indexes my entire site once or twice daily. Thats an astonishingly amount of effort for a small site like mine with not alot of content and few changes in an average week.

Microsoft intend to buy the struggling but noble Yahoo! and inject cash and resources to create a force that may one day topple Google. As someone who loves the internet and the freedom of information it brings I have a special admiration of Google and an intense hatred of Microsoft. I believe that everything Google has done in bringing information to the public for free, Microsoft seek to undo for profit.

I outline below my reasoning and why I believe the acquisiton of Yahoo! by Microsoft would be very bad news for the internet.

Search Comparison - Crawling

Google search results have always been honest, powerful, fast and representative of the ’state of the web’ at the time. With their well publicised expansion into mapping, email and soon mobile phones, Google now dominate web searching and advertising.

Even the once great Yahoo! now fails to compete in any real sense, with Microsoft’s Live Search barely scratching the surface. In my opinion as a Web Developer who is very interested in Search Engine Optimisation it is as much a battle of effort as it is ideas.

Yahoo! on the other hand account for around 12% and thats mostly historic pages, the same old content that they just check up on again and again. It takes a while for Yahoo! to index any new pages on my site, compared with Google it’s very slow and unadventurous.

Search Comparison - Indexing

I have also noticed that Yahoo! makes very little effort to read and rank pages in a thorough or fair way.

For example, my name is Leyton Jay, however people often mis-spell it with an ‘a’ as Layton Jay.

In an attempt to show up on Google for the mis-spelling I added it to my site’s keyword meta tag and the description meta tag. However because my name is not spelt in that manner (until this blog it was never part of the actual content) this has made no difference to Google; it saw straight through the deception and (at the time) it made no difference to my rankings.

Yahoo! on the other hand fell for perhaps the oldest trick in the book by believing that all the words in my keyword meta tag are infact on my site and meaningful.

This is a perfect example of ‘keyword-stuffing’ which is a trick that is so last century and low-tech, but Yahoo! still fell for it. This shows Yahoo! do very little in the way of cross-referencing content to meta data. Thus their results are not as true or trustworthy as Google’s.

Invading Pop Culture

If asked to name Google products or services off the top their head the average person on the street would probably answer “search, maps/earth, email and YouTube”. If asked a similar question about Yahoo! most people would stop after mentioning search with only some going on to mention email or Flickr.

Several years ago Yahoo! made the move to try to bring content to users, becoming sort of ‘online newspaper editors’ pumping news through their own portals.

Google however opted to bring users whatever information they desired in new and exciting ways. Its obvious now that Google made the best of the bravest choice, becoming a household name and a dictionary verb. Only the other day I heard a parent express their concerns that their 5year old had Googled the word ‘murder’.

Yahoo! developers are undoubtedly some of the most skilled in the industry, but what is it doing with them? Squandering them it seems and their announcement that they are moving towards semantic search is pretty laughable considering they trust meta tags implicitly and fall foul of keyword-stuffing.

Yahoo! is losing the battle to Google on all fronts and its valuable clientbase, goodwill and advertising revenues are all shrinking.

Google vs. Microsoft

The BBC’s Technology editor Darren Waters recently said:

Microsoft was late to the internet and has always been playing catch up.

Microsoft’s famously aggressive business style means it will never accept being second best to anyone. Unfortunately for Microsoft the difference between Live Search and Google is immense in terms of crawling, ranking, client-base, consumer faith, popularity, accessibility, pop culture and ‘being cool’.

Google now provide free office applications such as spreadsheets and wordprocessors that rival Microsoft’s expensive Office suite. To Google it’s about choice and geeking around making innovative applications, but to Microsoft, it’s nothing short of a declaration of war!

By attempting to buy Yahoo! for $44bn Microsoft have effectively announced their intension to topple Google. Infact earlier this year Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer vowed to gain market share against Google even if it led to his “last breath”.

Obviously they intend to swollow Yahoo!, it’s products and services, it’s client-base and all of it’s developer talent; to create something that will rival Google.

Microsoft vs. The Internet

I personally am against allowing Microsoft’s expansion into the internet to go unchallenged. I have issues with Microsoft about its blatent disregard for accessibility, interoperability and web standards let alone it’s frequent abuse of its incredible market power.

In 2004 the European Commission fined Microsoft 497m euros for abusing its market dominance.

It also fined them 899m euros in 2008 for poor interoperability with rival products.

It’s Internet Explorer web browser is by far the most popular in the world but the majority of Web Developers consider it to be an illogical, unreliable and painfully slow product which laughs in the face of web standards. This is illustrated by the recent rise in the popularity of alternative web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Opera in what is being billed as Browser Wars II.

Google today came on the attack, but rather than set itself up as a mere business rival to Microsoft it began to sow the seeds of an epic battle between cyber-good and cyber-evil.

Microsoft vs. The World

BBC News are reporting that Chief executive Eric Schmidt said Google was “concerned” about a deal and said it could have implications for the “openness” of the internet. He added:

“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft…we would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the internet, but I doubt it would be.”

“…the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone.”

“We are concerned that there are things Microsoft could do that would be bad for the internet.”

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer said in a blog this month:

“This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the internet: openness and innovation.”

Microsoft recently made something of a gaff by announcing in a blog that a new document outlining basic principles of interoperability has influenced the development of Internet Explorer 8 which is currently in beta. Initially this sounds positive, until you release that they seem to class the idea of having interoperability principles as new.

The Road Ahead

For Microsoft to win any kind of favour with me they will have to begin making up for the socially irresponsible way in which they participate in the internet. I’ve had arguements with Developers before who simply consider Internet Explorer to be a product, “if you dont like it use another browser” is a common cry on forums and blogs. “if I bought a Ford I wouldnt expect a Honda stereo to work in it” is another brainless answer to questions on interoperability.

But when your products are becoming ubiquitous in our societies, when they are being used in schools, libraries, hospitals, work-places, public-spaces and homes - they become more than just products. We rely on browsers, applications and operating systems now in our daily lives, many of us do it without thinking.

People are already placing trust in computers to educate, inform and entertain themselves and their children, computers are becoming tools for life and with that awesome investment in faith comes great responsibility.

Although I am not putting it past Microsoft to mend their selfish, aggressive and anti-competitive ways, Google does so much for me every single day and all Microsoft does is cause me grief and hassle.