I live in a large metropolitan city, San Francisco, which also means I’m continuously bombarded with branding messages to take what little money I have left after paying off all my rent and parking tickets. It also means I’m treated to such advertising gems as Ask’s confusing attempt to make me equate Ask with Algorithm. However, that campaign was only fleeting. Yahoo’s been invading my eyeballs for a lot longer, plastering their logo on buses and ballparks.
I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it… The only product placement I’ve seen their competitors on has been the rubiks cube I got from as Google swag. And therein lies the key difference between Google, Microsoft and the rest. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the soon to be bottom two search engines, Yahoo and Ask have been pimping chotchkies and billboards to customers. They’ve been focusing on propping up brand “awareness” in the real world instead of focusing on what really matters, distribution.
Microsoft powers Facebook search. Google powers MySpace. Both social networks are also coincidentally where all their ad money is evaporating to. Getting people to experience your product and brand at the same time is what companies should be doing and what Google is doing. Just look at Google Co-op and site specific searches. Distribution like that helps spread their product and brand to all corners of the web while generating links back to their service all for the price of free.
Yahoo needs to wake up and smell the coffee and realize the value in easily widgetizing (easier than APIs) and improving their search product or get out of the search business.
