Lucrative online advertisement business and its implied good profit would attract big players to build the platform for the present, or if not, for the future. In business, being a fast follower is nearly as good as being an innovator - it is a valid and good business strategy.
It would undoubtedly cause eventual consoilidation too. Here we may have a possible merge:
Reports: Microsoft, Yahoo talk merger again
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/114931.asp
What are the areas looking interesting?
Foremost, of couse it is the online ad (or you can read "search") platform: Panama or AdCenter? This is mainly to address conerns on Google, enough said.
Not to forget the not-yet-become-another-ad-platform instant messaging. A combination of Live Messenger (maybe Microsoft should really think hard on its branding strategy, Live is a boring word, a confusing world :p). and Yahoo Messenger should inflate the "active" user base significantly (maybe we should have some Federation of login for a start please?)
Third might be on the consolidation of regular services such as E-mail, Photo, News, Finance etc. This really requires some overhauling on each own, not to mention the combination of MSN and Yahoo. Personal experience (of course this never represent the habits of the entire visitor base) says that if I search, I rarely take a glance on the remaining page for "Today's Pick" etc. Therefore,
(1) separate search completely from portal content
(2) reorganize the naming and structure and of content offering, have a quick context filter (search) would be best: if i type in "photo", it should list all services related to photo and states why. Or someone else might prefer a personalize frontpage - why not but secondary
(3) next, naturally, Microsoft does what she does better, build software and attract huge base of developer and community base, this time, not only OS/desktop-centric but also for the web.
Media has another focus for Google too, particularly for Singapore, as said
Google Eyes Southeast Asia
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2007/gb20070504_401447.htm
An engineering center director position is provided so in days coming, you should see more engineering positions for Google Singapore at
http://www.google.com/support/jobs/bin/static.py?page=intl.html&jobslc=singapore
Also note that "the search giant has also not ruled out the possibility of acquiring companies in the Asia-Pacific region, adding that acquisitions are part of the company's overall global strategy."
Posted
May 05 2007, 10:24 AM
by
blackinkbottle