Why Yahoo Will Be The Next Google, Sort Of:

The writing is on the wall. The firewall that is. Look for job openings on both Google and Yahoo and you'll see what I mean.

Google actually has the balls to announce on its site that it prefers, almost requires, that its job applicants are graduates of a "big name" college or university. Yahoo's site says in essence that if you have a brain and experience, we don't care if you never left 3rd grade if what you have to contribute is a smart, good, workable idea.

Like with genetics, Google is setting itself up for birth defects like an inbred family. A blue-blooded family, but inbreds all the same. Yahoo, on the other hand, realizes the strength and resilience of the multi-breed mutt, looked down upon by all the purebreds but in the end the strongest, most disease- and defect-resistant of the species. Who is going to survive in the long run?

Google can't get past it's egoist intellect and relate to the masses and they try to cull what they believe is the "best of the best" and figure they can't miss. Yahoo relates to the intelligent common man and values well-roundedness over SAT scores or what school you went to. This is going to have huge implications a short ways down the internet road...

There's no disputing that Google's search technology is far superior to anything going. But look, for example by analogy, how many vehicles have incorporated the Wankel engine into massively successful automobile designs. The engine is only a part of the machine; it is not the machine itself. You don't drive a Wankel, do you? You drive a Mazda or a John Deere or at times a Norton or Mercedes, and soon many military combat vehicles.

Google is trying to build the rest of the car by itself, but you have a bunch of high-level engine mechanics that know and value little of ergonomic comfort, style, handling, simplicity and ease of use. Then they bring in another crew of high-level people for this, but they're all from the same gene pool.

Case in point: Blogger: spell check: both the words Google and Blogger come up as possible misspellings in the composition window: there you have it, a genius that can't even spell its own name (or probably tie its own shoes). We all know a few people like this don't we? The ones who can solve quadratic equations but can't explain a game of hackeysack to a group of 12 year olds. While one group spends its time intellectualizing inside its group of superior minds, the other actually plays the game and lives in the real world, so it knows instinctively the difference between just a good idea and one that works.

Yahoo hasn't put a restriction on where a good idea can come from, so I can only imagine that it's open to good ideas no matter if they come from a Harvard grad or a local polytech. This may lead them to greater innovation from within whereas Google is constantly seeking to acquire from without and then tweak and retro-fit.

I like Google. I like Yahoo, too. But the sooner they realize that one is a technology company and the other is a service company, the better off we and the internet will both be.

Long run, my money is on Yahoo to be a leader in real-world internet innovation and implementation over the next 10 years. Any company that has the wisdom and confidence to see through Microsoft's bully tactics is certainly on the right path for the future.

But I have huge respect for Google at the same time, and they are really living up to their responsibility of being the "defenders of the people" if you ask me, and they are practically the only thing big enough to stand in the way of government corruption and manipulation of our economy, social atmosphere, and quality of life. I see no reason Yahoo cannot coexist and thrive if it gets its priorities straight and starts making huge investments on and off the web...