Does Yahoo Look Way Too Microsoft Pragmatic To Me Only?
by
on July 29, 2009,
Ok, I think I could not avoid the buzz around Yahoo partnership with Microsoft that is finally officially announced - after all, it would be strange to ignore the event when it is the only thing everyone speaks about today, even the small TV stations here in Russia in their news sections.
But to tell you the truth, I’d have to admit that I feel almost allergic to the entire Microsoft - Yahoo discussions already after so many months of reading and covering news about it. Really, at some point the relationships between the two parties began to look like a multiyear soap opera Santa Barbara that was widely popular here in Russia in 90s and ran for so many years that a rare person could admit watching it from the very first episode till the end (I myself have no idea if it actually ended or not).
Unlike the soap opera, there’s finally something substantial that resembles a certain result in the Microsoft relationships with Yahoo - the search partnership that was announced in the early morning. For those of you who somehow avoided the news everywhere else, I’ll just point that this partnership is focused on web search only and will last 10 years.
The deal involves Yahoo rejecting its own search efforts and relying on Microsoft Bing search engine which will create a search power that will be more attractive to advertisers served by Yahoo as the combined sales force. And while Yahoo will be able to make money off search advertising, an important aspect for Microsoft is that the two search properties combined (and powered by Bing) could finally present some noticeable competition to the almighty Google - which is important for the overall search landscape.
As I consider myself a Yahoo user having an email account (admittedly that I have not checked for many months now), chatting with a few contacts using it as IM handle and being a huge fan of Flickr and sometimes visiting MyBlogLog, I think I can’t be indifferent when it comes to Yahoo future. In fact, Yahoo has always looked like a very good company that at some point lost a direction in which to go and still preserved way more loyal users than it probably deserved.
Watching so many bad things happening to Yahoo in the financial field recently has been quite painful and witnessing the entire blogosphere criticizing Yahoo for every move did not feel good either. It has been obvious for a while that Yahoo must change something dramatically and do it soon in order to stay afloat at all and some kind of a partnership with Microsoft was an obvious move for the company.
Now I know that Microsoft does not enjoy real popularity among internet users who are both unhappy about some of the products by Microsoft that they use (like someone really makes them use Vista and there are no options available at all) and about the attitude of the company that brings real businesslike attitude to the world wide web where it is not really welcome.
On the web you will regularly see companies that act like they don’t even think in terms of business and the affection of their community is the only thing that matters. And Google keeps reminding us “Don’t be evil” as their motto as if it is still possible to ignore quite a number of evil things, especially in how they treat users’ privacy. And everyone in the online business has corporate blogs for everything - sometimes choosing their blogs over formal press releases. Everyone but not Microsoft which sticks to the regular formats.
What I’m talking about is that in the online business world it is the usual attitude to demonstrate a company as a friend to everyone online and to care about the community - at the same time hiding all the talks about real business and money somewhere deep inside. It is normal to be shy about what your company actually is about - even if everyone realizes it is all about money.
And Microsoft has arrived to the online world from the real software world where people make real (huge in case of Microsoft) money and are never shy about talking business. It has always been visible in Microsoft’s steps to the online world and this position has often prevented Microsoft from achieving real success online - simply because the company tended to sound like an alien and did not behave like the users expected them to.
But this is the usual attitude from Microsoft as the company is known to think of everything in business terms but when Yahoo behaves in an even more pragmatic manner (sounding even more pragmatic than Microsoft itself), it feels like an unpleasant surprise - to me at least. I am referring to the phrase from Yahoo’s Carol Bartz in the blog post where she tried to explain the deal to Yahoo users:
As a result of the deal, Microsoft, which has great technologists and deep pockets, will have the scale to bring users faster, more useful and more personally relevant search.
Now I’ve been teaching myself hard to be a pragmatic person for the last few years and I think I have achieved certain success in this as I will hardly be persuaded to work for free when I have paying customers who need my time - simply because I can’t afford working for free. And I will never criticize any person or company that shows the same attitude and thinks about having the food for the family (or salary for employees) first - and everything else second. Yet Yahoo has been building the image of a friendly and open online company that is not very much into real-life issues and turning into a pragmatic company all of a sudden does not feel right even to me.
Ok, everyone knows that Yahoo did not really have any reasons to pursue this kind of partnership other than financial ones: Yahoo needed someone to help the company survive and Microsoft with the “deep pockets” was an ideal candidate. But is it fair to your partner to admit this fact like this in a blog post where you are supposed to talk to your users openly and explain all the benefits they will now see?
And admitting that the money from the deep pockets of your partner will let you all live better (because you can’t afford it yourself) sounds like a young girl explaining to her friends after marrying a millionaire that while she is certainly not in love, they will all now be able to go to an exciting trip to Europe - and to Africa next year. Honestly, if I were a husband (read Microsoft here), I’d certainly be offended.
