economics? Is that really the question here? ( was RE:[Sigia-l] Re: "Best Bets" the Yahoo way)

[Patrick Neeman]

Heh...

Not to point out the obvious, but...

All Yahoo is doing is copying another business model that's been around for
a long time -- The Yellow Pages. People pay to get in quicker, they pay for
larger ads, but the Yellow Pages generally lists all businesses (well, all
that want to get listed). The White Pages does the same thing, except some
of the time they charge you not to be listed.

I'm sure that as soon at the FTC looks at this, Yahoo's lawyers are going to
point to this example.

Who cares if Yahoo buys all of the different crawlers. They are pretty
ineffective as search tools anyways.

(Just my two cents -- as a person who had a weblog for the longest time that
ranked number 1 under "Anna Kournikova nude" and "Britney Spears nude", yet
had no pictures of either on my site).

---

Another two cents -- no matter how much Yahooligans tell you, Yahoo is going
to do whats best for itself. Sometimes, it happens to coincide with the
needs of the users. Some of the time, it doesn't. They will continue to move
to a model where they will guide users to paid results as much as possible.
But don't think the users know this. A lot do (most don't, but that's
changing). They understand that many of the links are under a payola model.
Give them more credit then you are. :)

P@

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] 
> On Behalf Of Listera
> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 5:08 PM
> To: SIGIA-L
> Subject: Re: economics? Is that really the question here? ( 
> was RE:[Sigia-l] Re: "Best Bets" the Yahoo way)
> 
> Look, Yahoo has bought last year three of the largest web 
> crawlers that operate payola programs: AltaVista, Fast 
> AlltheWeb and Inktomi, the largest payola provider. That's 
> where the impetus for this service comes from. As David 
> Heller pointed out there are other ways of helping the user, 
> Yahoo chose the old one: Pay the Piper.
> 
> There's no free lunch. Yahoo is selling access for a reason. 
> The reason is the advantage you get. The user does *not* know this.
> 
> Arrgh, where does this come from? Who said it was useless? 
> It's useful for those who pay to be advantaged and Yahoo, of 
> course. After all, bribery usually benefits the payer and the 
> payee, but we outlaw it.
> 
> > or that it is something different makes people's points valid.
> 
> There isn't an ounce of originality in this, that's why I've 
> been citing analogies from politics, medicine, journalism, 
> etc. That's why the Federal Trade Commission is concerned 
> about this, but given the abysmal record of this 
> administration in such matters, nobody should hold their breath.
> 
> Ziya
> Nullius in Verba 
> 
> 
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