Marketing Pilgrim

For all of the drama and the back and forth of the Microsoft and Yahoo courtship from the summer it’s almost laughable to learn that the two still don’t have all the details ironed out yet. The deal that was originally supposed to be signed off on October 27th isn’t quite ready for the super huge pens that were used in the photo op pictures from July. We are now left to wonder what the heck wasn’t figured out before these two giants said “I do” in the summer.

Yahoo tells about the delay in getting the scheduled signing done in an SEC filing that the Business Insider reports

In their original July 29 agreement, Yahoo and Microsoft said they would sign finish negotiating the search deal by October 27.

Google wants a book deal. And no, not so it can spill all the secrets of the Internet, but so they can offer electronic versions of books. But their proposed settlement faced so much opposition that they had to drop it, although they’re still pursuing other avenues. Aside from Yahoo and Microsoft, authors also challenged the Google book deal—including Chinese authors.

But the Chinese authors’ complaints, when indexed by Google, were listed as potentially harmful in SERPs, The Inquirer reports. Baidu gave no malware warning in its SERPs for the page. After readers reported this, the newspaper of the Communist Party accused the search engine of keeping its users away from the information. Meanwhile, an unnamed paper official said the section with the complaint was “maliciously blocked by Google.”

Back in July, Yahoo premiered the latest version of their homepage. The two biggest differences were the ability to personalize apps to add content to the homepage, and ditching dozens of links to less popular Yahoo services. And after three months, Yahoo’s ready to report their progress: time spent on their homepage is up 20%.

Speaking at Yahoo’s annual Analyst Day today, senior vice president Tapan Bhat also reported that pageviews were up 9%. By Yahoo’s measures, the redesign is a success—they were going for greater user engagement (what Bhat dubbed “PageYield”).

The big changes—specifically personalization, but streamlining the links probably helped—contributed directly to the increased engagement. The personalized widgets in the page were well received by Yahoo-ers. Says TechCrunch:

It’s a slow news day so we’ll just enter into the realm of ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybe, kinda, sortas’ for a minute and imagine a world without barriers. Sounds nice doesn’t it? Imagine a place where you would be able to have the best possible smart phone device for you personally regardless of who your carrier is or is not partnered with. Imagine there’s no dropped calls …. it’s easy of you try. I think I may be channeling John Lennon ……

Anyway, what I am imagining based on a report from All Things D is the ability to possibly have an iPhone even though I am a Verizon customer for the foreseeable future. That’s an interesting prospect for sure but one I will have to do a ‘wait and see’ on.

Google went a long way toward answering the naysayers of their Google Apps offering. How you ask? By winning a contract to provide e-mail and other Internet services to the City of Los Angeles. Nice get.

While winning a contract is just the first step in proving that Google is a serious threat to the stronghold of Microsoft’s software business, it’s a pretty big step. This kind of deal will be felt up and down the left coast (that’s what we East Coast folks refer to the West Coast as). Starting in the great Northwest there will be some serious Steve Ballmer hand-wringing and maybe another Bobby Knight-like chair throwing moment or two. In NoCal (the Google Plex in Mountain View in particular) there may be some Tiger Woods-like fist pumps of victory. While in SoCal it’s likely that no one outside the people who made the decision will know or care because it’s not directly about them. Different strokes for different folks, right?

Barry Diller is getting close to waving his white flag in the search wars.

During IAC’s quarterly earnings conference call, the top dog made it quite clear that Ask.com may be on the chopping block:

"We’ve been asked a lot whether we’re open to consolidating transactions in the area of search. The answer is yes," Diller said. "And, it is unlikely that we would be the consolidator."

While Diller cautioned "you cannot really make any absolutes" about deals, he acknowledged that Ask.com faced a challenging environment in a search business.

He may as well have hung up a "For Sale" sign on the Ask.com homepage!