Yahoo v Google Round Two

    Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo, tells CNNMoney about the unique business model of the “universal megaportal” in an interview with CNNMoney .

    Terry Semel joined Yahoo in 2001 right after the crushing “dot-com crash” that shook America. However, the most popular portal Yahoo has managed to survive this crisis and maintain its leadership until now.

    The director of the largest Internet company fulfills his task of transforming Yahoo into "the first media titanium of the 21st century." The basic strategy of the company is to maximize the audience of the portal, using all possible services and constantly improving their quality. Over the past year, Yahoo has become the only major Internet company that has managed to significantly increase such a parameter as the average time spent by users on the site.

    This was made possible by adding new services and increasing the "depth of surfing" on the site. One example of increasing "depth" is the music service Yahoo Music. Initially, this service was no different from similar services of competitors, but the developers added the ability to exchange playlists between users through an IM pager. The result is a more personalized service where people spend more time. Typically, Yahoo Music is even more profitable than the most famous music online store Apple iTunes , because the latter sells songs at a meager price of 99 cents and does not earn almost anything from it. Their main goal is the sale of players.

    Yahoo's business model is completely different. They sell ads and aim to attract the largest possible audience. In this sense, Yahoo's competitors are more likely the next-generation services MySpace and YouTube. However, Yahoo has something to answer competitors in the spirit of web 2.0. For example, more than 50 million people are participating in the new Yahoo Answers social search service , and this “game” is very popular among young users, which is very important.

    Throughout the first half of this year, Yahoo created an infrastructure for broadcasting video content, which should become an important part of news, sports and other sections of the portal.

    This year, Yahoo forecasts revenue growth of 29%. This is much less than 42% last year and 77% in 2004. Great hopes are placed on the new generation Panama advertising platform , which should correct the situation and increase profits from search advertising. Unfortunately, the release of this platform is constantly delayed.

    Not all questions to the president of Yahoo related to the topic of business. There were questions and a personal plan. For example, Terry Semel is known to love playing tennis, and often does so with his friend Rupert Murdoch, media mogul and owner of News Corp. When asked which of them often wins, Terry answered diplomatically: "We play in pairs, so it depends on which side the professional plays on."

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