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It was a Busy Week in the Jungle June 25, 2007

eBay and Google kind of make up – sort of
Nearly 2 weeks ago, I relayed the story of eBay & Google’s corporate cat fight. Well, eBay has decided resume their advertising on Google, but they will be relying on alternative advertising services to a greater degree. This is good news for Yahoo and Microsoft and it could be good news for you. You see, one potentially positive side effect of eBay of advertising less on Google, is that it might be easier for the rest of the world to win AdWords keyword auctions. If eBay bids less aggressively or doesn’t bid at all on certain terms, the reduced demand may push prices lower. Probably won’t happen, but it’s a nice thought anyway…

New top Yahoos
Terry Semel, resigned as CEO of Yahoo this past week. Much has been made of Yahoo’s inability to be Google, and Semel’s been in hot water for most of the last year. Additionally, Wenda Millard, chief sales officer in the U.S., resigned yesterday. Yahoo said it hopes the latest shake-up will streamline its sales to advertisers and hopefully the changes will make their customers happy (or at least the Wall Street hot shots calling for the executive shake-up).

Yahoo founder, Jerry Yang, gets to be CEO again. It’d be interesting to see if Yang will turn into the second coming of Steve Jobs or Michael Spindler.

Yahoo Maps – Is better than before, good enough?
Recently I noticed that Yahoo made some changes to their mapping platform. Among the improvements are the additions of European driving directions, terrain overlays, improved identification of neighborhoods, the ability to request driving directions by landmarks, and improved readability. Surprisingly, the reaction among Yahoo fans has been less than enthusiastic. Apparently, Yahoo is no longer using Decarta as their mapping engine but instead relying on in-house technologies, so they can better control their own destiny.

Unfortunately, Yahoo has been losing mind share & market share in local search and mapping to Microsoft & Google. Now that Yahoo controls its own destiny, it’ll be interesting to see if they catch up to Google (since they are still using Decarta) or Microsoft (which has always used in-house technologies). I hope the Yahoo guys can stay in the game. I really like their mapping API and they’ve done some innovative (if underappreciated) work.

Microsoft – Not making things easy for Google or Yahoo

Microsoft appears to be taking a lot of street level pictures. Can street level be far behind?

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Comments»

1. ARDELL - June 26, 2007

Is there a Geeky Boy convention in Hawaii or something?

2. Robbie - June 26, 2007

Well, given the growing importance internet advertising and internet mapping technologies to the industry’s future development, I’m surprised the post has garnered the lack of comments it has. Then again, I’m a geek, so blog posts about SQL tend to fascinate me (so perhaps I’m a poor judge of what’s relevant at times). ;)

Perhaps all the cool kids are using Zillow EZ ads these days and AJAX web mapping so 2006?

BTW - Up for Street of Dreams this year?

3. Dustin - June 26, 2007

There’s a topic embedded in this “tech” discussion I *wish* I could talk a lot more on… (some day soon, I hope!)

About all I feel safe saying that there is a palpable energy change around Move ever since Lorna left her position at Yahoo (having been extremely influential in products like Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Personals) to join us as President of Move. Today’s announcement that Vaughan Smith is joining us from eBay has only added to the general feeling that there are lots more good things to come…

4. ARDELL - June 27, 2007

We miss you, Dustin. We know why you have duct tape on your mouth…but we miss you all the same.