Over the coming days, weeks and months plenty will be written about what happened today.  Yahoo has officially entered an agreement to turn over their search engine (and all of the monetization of search results) to be handled by Microsoft using their relatively new Bing technology.

I watched Carol Bartz’s offiicial address this morning.  Although her demeanor was certainly polished and confident, I did sense a bit of resignation.  Afterall, Yahoo stood firm against Microsoft believing that the company was undervalued.  Now, it would seem, Yahoo has been distilled into what I have been saying it has always been— the most powerful destination site on the web.

But, there’s a second part to what I have been saying all along— and that is that no matter how good of a destination site Yahoo is, the revenue that comes with being a content site and not an advertiser platform is significantly smaller.  Thus, I expect it won’t be long before we see a leaner Yahoo altogether.  I feel for the staff who works to support search products, and the stress this must be causing you.

On a lighter note, in typical Yahoo versus Microsoft style, the homepages of each do seem reflective of the different takes on what is transpiring:

This morning, Bing features a bridge spanning two majestic and beautiful mountains (in Geneva, nonetheless).  I have no thoughts on what the dam might represent, except possibly Google:

While Yahoo has a lighter presentation on their homepage.  The image and story I was greeted with (sure it varies depending on the layout of your new Yahoo homepage) is about ‘armswinging’.  Saying that scientists have finally solved the mystery of why people swing their arms when they walk.  Well, Yahoo, that speaks volumes of the situation, in my opinion.  Microsoft is connecting mountains, and Yahoo is swinging arms.  I guess that would support what I thought I read as resignation in Carol Bartz’s presentation.

If you pay any attention at all, you have by now been overrun with all the hype surrounding Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  If you don’t believe me, go to Twitter and check the trending topics.  Even more interesting, check out all the posts referencing #badabing.  I don’t know if these are all industry insiders using this, but there sure do appear to be a lot of them posting their comments/findings about the new engine.  

Microsoft is calling Bing a “decision engine”.  That’s all well and good, but really Bing doesn’t seem like anything that new or groundbreaking.  Don’t get me wrong, the search seems good.  Better than live.com.  The association of topic-relevant information within the search results pages is new and well executed.  If nothing else, Bing deserves some action for that.  Some of the expanded data (although there isn’t a whole lot of it yet) is interesting.  

But, what makes it a decision engine and not a search engine?  Users are still searching based on keywords.  Users are still looking at the results pages to decide what to do next.  Sure, the user experience has been slightly changed and even improved.  But, this is not a major change.

If you want to see some real rethinking of the basic search premise, I suggest you instead check out Google Squared.  The latest from the Google Labs is a pretty cutting edge and interesting retooling of the entire search experience, essentially combining a series of searches to refine the information presented based on the relationship of those elements.  It also provides some pretty useful data all together on a single page, much like what Bing takes pride in achieving, but in Google Squared’s case it is a column-based layout where each column is customizeable providing the opportunity for really unique results.

I am happy for Microsoft and thrilled to see a decent search product out of them.  I think the launch of a new brand will be successful in getting user adoption and helping people forget live.com, msn.com, and the other marginal efforts of the past.  But, make no mistake in who the real innovators are.  Clearly, Google still holds that honor.

I find it pretty incredible that the top 3 businesses in such a competitive marketplace have such a different approach to selling their products.  Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.com peddle more or less the same goods: search ads.  How they get you to that point, however, is very different.

Google decided long ago that the main page of Google.com would feature little more than the search box.  This seems wise, in my opinion.  Google does offer a lot of extranenous features and services, but the bulk of their revenue comes from one thing: search ads.  Why would Google want its users to do anything but to trigger those ads? 

For my screengrab today, Google was featuring Magritte’s birthday.  Classy, and appealing to their user base.

It only took a few years (decades in internet time) for Microsoft to figure out that Google had the right idea, and remove everything else from their site.  This change required (or enabled, depending on your opinion) rebranding MSN to be Live.com (in turn, they improved both their ad matching and ad serving capabilities). 

For my screengrab today, Live.com was featuring London.  I found the page very appealing, and aside from spending extra time on the site not searching, I give Microsoft credit for putting up something with such class:

Then, there is Yahoo.  Now, again and again I remind everyone that I am a diehard Yahoo fan.  I have stuck with them for years and years, and I will stick with them until the bitter end (which, by the looks of things lately might not be that far off).  Yahoo’s site seems to becoming sillier and sillier.

Today’s Yahoo homepage featured a photograph of man stretching to fit his mouth around a hamburger, and his date’s horrified reaction. 

So, here’s what I think.  It isn’t fair to compare these page, and here’s why:

Yahoo isn’t like the other two.  Yahoo is a content site.  I have been saying this for years, and Yahoo’s attempted deal for Google to serve their ads (failed) may be evidence that others are thinking the exact same way.  Yahoo’s value isn’t search.  Their value isn’t serving search ads.  Yahoo’s value is content, page view, readership.  Yahoo needs to refocus on serving effective ads on their content pages.  They should have beat Google to the browser punch, too.  That writing has been on the wall for years and years (think AOL, Prodigy, etc).  Instead of being a good site on the internet, Yahoo had the opportunity to be the “springboard” to the internet for millions of users. 

Now, it may be too late.  I’ll do whatever I can to support you, Yahoo.  But, at some point you are going to have to come to terms with what you are deep inside.  A content site.  With all those geniuses you have on staff, someone’s got to be able to see this and figure out how to monetize it. 

As everyone in the world surely knows by now, June 27th was Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft. 

With 100s of books and 100,000s of blog posts detailing every known second of his controversial career, I won’t waste words saying what has already been said over and over again.  Surely, Bill Gates was a ruthless businessman.  He did not become the world’s richest man by befriending the competition.  Surely, Bill Gates was arrogant.  He didn’t withstand the most relentless antitrust litigation in US history (with his company virtually unscathed) by yielding to the prosecution. 

But, whatever you choose to think or say about Bill Gates, it is hard not to admire him for what he has already accomplished, what he continues to accomplish, and what he has contibuted to the world.  There aren’t many people who can make a legitimate claim to have had the impact on society that Bill Gates has had.  Whether the ideas were his own or stolen doesn’t really matter in the end.  Great leaders act on behalf of their advisors, their consituencies, and even their competition.  In national politics, “leaning over the isle” is considered a positive trait.  Whether Gates ran Microsoft ethically or not is largely irrelevant, and I challenge anyone to show me a large corporation that doesn’t do whatever it can to make more money for its leaders and shareholders.

Like him or not, Bill Gates wielded a tremendous amount of power at the helm of Microsoft, at least up until the last years.  At the end of his reign, I think we are all in a better place than we were when he started.  We have the internet.  We have cheap desktop computers.  Regardless of his ruthless business practices, his brutal treatment of the competition, or his arrogance against congress, he leaves the techno-world in a better place than he found it.  Few US presidents can say the same thing of their terms in office. 

Whatever your opinion of the man might be, we were all fortunate to have had Bill Gates to hold the reigns of the world of technology for a while.