*Bing!*
I was typing a long crystal-ball-analysis of the seach engine market but the missus yanked the leash. Suffice to say, Yahoo is the new AOL. More on El Reg Forum space soon, hopefully.
I need to go nowooorrgh...
Yahoo! has released disappointing results for its fourth quarter, with earnings down 5 per cent and revenues falling a further 13 points. Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (TAC) fell three per cent to $1.17bn, compared to $1.21bn this time last year, although income from operations did increase by 10 per cent to $ …
I know from personal experience that yahoo.com.tw is the preferred home page if a significant proportion of Taiwanese. Most of them head over to google when they want to search.
Can anybody explain why TAC are excluded? Is that just to make the revenue figure look better?
Gotta love 'business speak':
"...In 2012 we will be aligning resources behind key areas of focus to enable us to move aggressively in market..."
Translation: Quick. Lets sell some shit, before we go bust!
As others have said, how exactly do Yahoo! make their money these days, anyway? Even back in the pre-Google era, their search engine was a poor second to Alta Vista. Nowadays, the only time they cross my radar is when Google search results turn up some "Yahoo! Answers" —a service which would be more accurately named "Yahoo! Completely Fuckwitted and Uneducated Guesswork".
Yahoo Answers is not a service.
It is a site where 20 million users enjoy asking questions and giving answers/replies/responses. They do it for the sake of doing the activity, NOT for you to learn from.
It is an online version of neighbours asking advice over the back fence or in the pub (although, strangely, the rules prohibit "chatting").
It is very light on advertising, so probably doesn't make much for Yahoo. BUT it brings them a lot of traffic they can convert to email, home page, news and other views. It's really an SEO trap.