Google vs. Yahoo

News analysis On the walls of Yahoo's modest
Silicon Valley offices there are posters with sketches of oddball
inventions that have landed patents, such as a portable bird cage. The
point: If a bird cage can get a patent, Yahoo's employees can come up
with something big if they put their minds to it.


The posters are promoting a program called the "Idea Factory" that
is supposed to goose inventive thinking at the 10-year-old
Internet-giant-turned-media-powerhouse. Through Idea Factory, staffers
are urged to submit notions for improving everything from the company's
products to its campus.

Five miles down the road at offices of archrival Google, inventive
thinking is assumed. At Google, engineers are expected to spend one day
a week on a project of personal interest. It's a mandate that's spawned
new services such as Google News, which now attracts 7.1 million
visitors per month, according to Nielsen NetRatings, and the social
networking site Orkut, which has yet to be integrated into the search
site.
As the two giants tussle for domination of online advertising dollars,
it's increasingly clear that this tug-of-war is really a test of what
kind of corporate culture an Internet company needs: Is it a
by-the-numbers and increasingly Hollywood-savvy environment like
Yahoo's? Or can an intellectual playground like Google continue to grow
and thrive even as it approaches $4 billion in annual revenue?

The answers to those questions could have a lasting impact on how
Internet companies are formed in years to come. If Yahoo comes out on
top, investors could insist on a chief executive like Yahoo's Terry
Semel, a longtime Warner Bros. executive known for his media savvy and
no-nonsense directives. If Google continues its rocket ride,
they could look to an Eric Schmidt, a passionate technologist by
training and education who is happy to let his engineers steal the
limelight.

"Google is...all about individuals fulfilling or exceeding their
potential, and employees are given significant license to foster this,"
said Geoffrey Moore, high-tech guru and author of the popular
management tome "Crossing the Chasm." Yahoo used to be like that, Moore
says. But under Semel, who took over Yahoo's corner office four years
ago, it has morphed into a more mature company with tough management
discipline, but perhaps lacking the creative giddiness it had in its
early years.

The two companies share a common DNA but are taking divergent paths.
Yahoo's co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang were doctoral candidates
in electrical engineering at Stanford University in 1994 when they
started work on their first search engine. Two years later, Google's
founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin also collaborated as Stanford
doctoral candidates on a search engine called BackRub, a predecessor to
Google. Page's dorm room was the company's first data center, and the
two entrepreneurs even called on their friend Filo for advice before
starting Google in 1998.




















"The biggest difference right now is Larry and Sergey still run
Google, and Terry Semel has a much bigger say at Yahoo," while its
co-founders aren't typically involved in day-to-day operations, said
Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.com. "Google is still
infused with the whole Larry and Sergey spirit, if you will."

It's not just the cultures that clash. The two companies' businesses
also are on a collision course, competing for the same Web visitors and
advertising dollars. In the last three years, Yahoo has reshaped one of
its core businesses around Web search and related advertising, making
itself second only to Google in search ad dollars, with technology that
many believe is keeping pace with that of its younger rival.Written by:

Stefanie Olsen


Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Purity wrote:Yah, that's the fact google searches 5 times faster than yahoo and won't lag your computer . In fact, it even provides more useful and accurate informations in the search engines

Azure wrote:Google is way better, more people use it, its only in the philippines that you can see that yahoo is more popular than google. its cause here, we use YM, not MSN. I like MSN better though.

I wonder why google isn't popular in the Philippines????