While they may be breathing a sigh of relief at Yahoo! after seemingly escaping the clutches of Microsoft, this may still be the end of the road for the Yahoo! business with more vultures circling after they made the mistake of suggesting that they are ripe for takeover at the right price. Even though they could not agree a price with Microsoft, to many people they have sold themselves down the river….

Over the last decade life has been tough for Microsoft’s MSN searching engine and Yahoo! have not faired much better, but together it could have been such a different story. The innovation of the two boards and the massive firepower of Microsoft could have made a real difference but what does the future hold for both companies?

Yahoo!

The vultures are most definitely circling the company and it would come as no surprise to see a deal agreed with either a Venture Capital company or another of the major online conglomerates over the next few weeks. This episode has not been the best in the history of Yahoo! and they are now in a weaker position than they have ever been before.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s MSN offshoot seems to be lacking somewhat in size to attack the mighty Google and while the Yahoo! deal is a set back they have shown that they are looking ahead and making plans. Do not write off MSN as they will be back, most likely with a larger or similar sized partner in tow. This is just the start of a new life for MSN.

All in all this latest blow, after years of rumours and counter rumours about a possible merger, will further enhance the power of Google and give them a little more breathing space before they see any real contenders come forward to steal their crown. Thankfully for webmasters around the world, Google are of a size that they would never be able to make any sizeable acquisitions in the search engine world so any more growth will be purely organic.

Watch this space, there is more change to come in the not too distant future…….the landscape is changing…..

I decided to update my list of Pagerank 10 websites I posted earlier since Google is said to have updated their pagerank. So here’s the updated list:

• validator.w3.org Downgraded to PR9
• web.mit.edu
• www.adobe.com
• www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/index.html New on the list
• www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
• www.adobe.com/products/index.html New on the list
• www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
• www.apple.com/quicktime/download Downgraded to PR9
• www.doe.gov New on the list
• www.energy.gov
• www.google.com
• www.keio.ac.jp Downgraded to PR9
• www.mac.com Downgraded to PR9
• www.macromedia.com (redirected to adobe.com)
• www.microsoft.com Downgraded to PR9 (could be because I was redirected to www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx)
• www.nasa.gov
• www.nsf.gov
• www.real.com
• www.usa.gov/index.shtml New on the list
• www.w3.org
• www.whitehouse.gov
• www.yahoo.com Downgraded to PR9

One of the more funny things about the update of pagerank is that both Yahoo and Microsoft got downgraded. Could it be because of the proposed merger between the two?

I used the Google toolbar in Firefox to check these sites so I may have missed someone . In that case, please let me know and I’ll update the list.

We’ve just started using OpenID on this blog to see how it’s working before we add it to all our blogs. If you haven’t heard about OpenID before it’s a way to login at sites (register) by simply using a URL as ID. That way you don’t have to fill in the same information on all blogs or sites where you have the need to login. You also get the benefit of not having to remember 89 million user names and password because you simply login with your blog URL for example.

So we’re doing this to make it easier for you (our visitors) to register and comment in this blog

Where can I get an OpenID?

Over at openid.net you’ll find a list of providers offering OpenIDs. WordPress.com, Yahoo, Technorati, Flickr and AOL are some examples of OpenID providers so the chances that you already got an OpenID is really big. I haven’t been able to verify if Google are offering OpenIDs or not or if they’re planning to do so in the future. I really hope Google got such plans because that will increase the usage of OpenID by at least 100% or something. EDIT: I just learned that Google both accept comments from OpenID users in Blogger blogs and Blogger is also an OpenID provider (see this page).

So how do you login using your OpenID?

At this blog you simply just visit the login page and fill in your OpenID URL instead of any user name or password (like on the example picture). Then press the login button and you will be redirected to your OpenID provider (like Wordpress.com, AOL or Yahoo!) to verify your identity. You will then be sent back to our web site logged in as your OpenID user .This way you don’t have to register or anything at this blog since you’ve already done that at your OpenID providers web site .

If you’re already registered as a user at blog.xaviermedia.com you can associate your current user name with your OpenID by visiting this page.

You can of course also access the comment form directly and fill in your OpenID URL directly as web site URL like in the example below. Unfortunately that will give you an error on this site due to some problem with the popular posts plugin we’re using here . So it’s recommended that you login as the above example first before using your OpenID.

The idea is to look for the OpenID logo when you’re visiting a blog, forum or other web site that require registration.

This looks cool! Can I do it on my own blog?

Yes, of course you can and it’s really easy. At this blog we’re using a plugin called WP-OpenID which can be found at Wordpress.org. Just upload the plugin to your blog and activate it. That’s all!

While there is much comment and speculation about the proposed $44 billion acquisition of Yahoo! by bitter rival MSN, many are starting to ask whether the merger of these two may open up the door for Wikipedia to slip in “unnoticed” with their new user controlled search engine project. Could it really happen?

If you ask any webmaster or surfer for their views on Google, MSN and Yahoo! you will get a whole variety of answer and comments. The bottom line is that while Google are the most powerful search engine (and possibly company) on the internet, they have their critics, as do the likes of MSN and Yahoo! If we were to end up with just two major search engines on the internet there are fears that competition would be stifled to say the least, with many believing that at least three unconnected parties are required to make a “free” market.  So what can Wikipedia offer?

Wikipedia are best known for their enormous online “encyclopaedia” which is monitored by and edited by the billions of users who visit the site every year. It is a site for the people, which is edited and controlled by the people.  They hope to use the very same philosophy for their search engine, allowing users to vote for and suggest web sites, but with sufficient protection to ensure that there is no spamming of sites to move them up the rankings.  While there are concerns about how they would ensure no corruption within the system, the idea seems to have caught the eyes of many. When will it be available?

The search engine is actually online and live now, but it is not yet “loaded” with the masses of information which are required to make it useful to webmasters and surfers. The company say that it could take anything up to a couple of years to create an information database which will give decent searchable results.  However, once the site reaches critical mass and the various security / spamming issues are sorted, will it be a success?

There is no doubt that if we end up with two major search engine groups then there is space for a third, whether this is Wikipedia or another third party yet to come to the fore.  It will be interesting to see how this one unravels.

Yesterday I wrote about Microsofts bid on Yahoo and started thinking about all search engines we’ve seen over the 10-15 years. Do you remember them all? Well, here’s a flashback for you (I know there are many more search engines, but I can’t write about them all ).

Altavista

Altavista was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and saw the daylight in December 1995. In the beginning altavista.digital.com was used as domain name for the search engine. As of 1998, it used 20 multi-processor machines using DEC’s 64-bit Alpha processor. Each machine had 130 GB of RAM, 500 GB of hard disk space and received 13 million queries per day. During this time Altavista was the biggest and only search engine worthy the name Eveyone (with a few exceptions of course) used Altavista. In 1999 when Digital was acquired by Compaq the name www.altavista.com was purchased from AltaVista Technology Incorporated for amazing 3.3.million dollar (it was an amazing amount in 1999). In February 2003 Altavista was purchased by Overture Services, Inc and in October the same year Overture (including Altavista) was acquired by Yahoo.

Yahoo!

One of the first and biggest directories (and later also search engines) was founded in 1994 (the domain name www.yahoo.com was registered in January 1995). In the beginning Yahoo was only a simple directory of links categorized in categories (very similar to DMOZ) while the search engine results was provided by Altavista since 1996. During the year 1997-1999 Yahoo and other directories grow rapidly and new services was released almost daily. Yahoo acquired Rocketmail in 1997 from Four11 (now Yahoo! Mail), web hosting provider GeoCities in 2000 and eGroups in mid 2000 (now Yahoo Groups). In 2005 photo sharing service Flickr, blo.gs, online social event calendar Upcoming.org and social bookmark site del.icio.us joined the Yahoo family of services.

Excite

In 1994 International Data Group a group of students at Stanford University $100 000 to develop an online service and in December 1995 Excite was born. In 1996 Magellan and WebCrawler was bought, and Excite signed a distribution deal with Netscape, Microsoft, Apple, and some other companies. Later that year Excite went public. Yahoo negotiated to purchase Excite in 1998, but @Home Network took control over Excite in early 1999 instead. In 2001 Excite@Home collapsed and the company had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. During the cllapse iWon.com started developing a new Excite portal and was able to get their hands on excite.com. iWon.com later changed it’s corporate name to Excite Networks.

Lycos

Lycos stared its days in 1994 as a search engine research project by Dr. Michael Loren Mauldin (the domain name www.lycos.com was registered in 1995). In 1999 Lycos was the most visited online destination in the world and had a local presence in 40 countries world-wide. Lycos merged with Spanish Terra Networks in 2000, but that wasn’t a happy “marrige” so in 2004 they went separate ways. Lycos became once again Lycos, Inc. when it was acquired by Korean Daum Communications Corporation after the split with Terra. During the year Lycos acquired a couple of popular web services like web hosting companies Angelfire and Tripod.com, search engine HotBot and people search engine WhoWhere.com.

Google

Students from Stanford University seems to like searching because Google is also a product by students from SU . Google started as a research project in 1996 and was incorporated in 1998. In the beginning the search engine used google.stanford.edu as domain name but in 1997 they finally got www.google.com instead. In 2001 Google started acquiring several small companies with innovative technology. One of them where Pyra Labs (Blogger.com) and another where Upstartle, the creators of Writely (now Google Docs & Spreadsheets). The two most famous acquisitions must be YouTube.com that Google got in 2006 for the small sum of US$1.65 billion and DoubleClick in 2007 for US$3.1 billion.

DMOZ - Open Directory Project

DMOZ actually not a search engine but only a directory. It was founded in 1998 under the name Gnuhoo, but had to change to NewHoo. After complaints from Yahoo! the directory had to change name again, and again before they finally settled for the Open Directory Project. Netscape acquired the directory project in October 1998 and Netscape itself was acquired by AOL shortly thereafter. According to unofficial estimates the number of URLs in the directory project surpassed the Yahoo! Directory in April 2000. The lack of advertisements on the site is one of the things that makes Dmoz so fantastic. One other thing is the number of volunteering editors that helps making the directory what it is.

A big thanks to Wikipedia.org and WayBack Machine for all the information used in this post.