Search marketing
Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco yesterday, Google's co-founder and president of technology, Sergey Brin, fielded questions on a variety of touchy topics ranging from the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal, legal battles with news and book publishers, and whether or not Google planned to buy Twitter.
Being magnanimous to Google's smaller, financially struggling rival, Yahoo, Brin expressed his disappointment over the Internet portal's search deal with Microsoft, noting "I think it's a shame Yahoo plans to abdicate that area because they were doing interesting things."
Indeed, ever since announcing the search deal, Yahoo has done its utmost to persuade users it still does care about search, even if the firm will soon be forced to switch off its back-end search crawling and indexing systems and submit to using Microsoft's Bing to power its search engine instead.
Brin, in what could be interpreted by a cynic as slightly condescending fashion, congratulated Yahoo for having made some truly interesting innovations in search. Google dominates the search market with 65 per cent market share, while Yahoo holds just under 19 per cent.
The Google co-founder also admitted to having fiddled around with Microsoft's Bing, as well as with other competing search engines, and said of Microsoft's fledgling service - which currently holds just 9.4 per cent of the search market - "reminded us that search is a very competitive market." Although whether Brin really feels Bing is a real threat seems doubtful.
Bad news for those who thought Google might give advertisers a bit of a break during the recession, though; Brin spoke about "a rising tide," in Internet advertising rates and said ad rates would increase.
