Keep Users, Lose Searchers

If you don’t like that big, pesky Yahoo search box on your My Yahoo page, you can now make it smaller. The Yahoo Blog reports: “My Yahoo! now offers a ‘small search box’ setting to help minimize the search box up top.”

Of course, a smaller search box will mean that fewer Yahoo users will end up paying attention to their own Yahoo search bars—which means that Yahoo has chosen to sacrifice its search share so as to keep more of its My Yahoo users happy.

Good idea? Bad idea? We’ll have to see. Either way, it’s one more sign that Yahoo has thrown in the towel on being the search giant, and is looking to focus on staying on top as a web portal.

Google v. China v. Google

The scenario: Censorship as punishment
Congress awarded the Dalai Lama, and China retaliated by redirecting Google searches in China to Chinese search engine Baidu.

The irony
In January 2006, Google capitulated to Chinese requests that the company censor its own search results on Google.cn. Rights groups berated Google for the move.

Why Google may have been right
At the time, Google argued that it was doing the right thing. China wouldn’t let Google into the country without self-censorship; and, Google claimed, the freedom that Google-provided information would ultimately foster could more than justify a modicum of self-censorship

Sirgey and Larry may have been on to something. Flash-forward to 2007: Chinese Googlers, re-routed to Baidu, will see their country’s censorship machine in action.

Had Google not played by the rules on self-censorship in ’05, Chinese searchers never would have seen their freedom of search yanked from their desktops (or at least not in this way). That’s hardly Tiananmen Square fodder. But it is bound to make an impression—if only subliminally, and if only in aggregate with other freedoms Chinese people lose every day—on the part of the Chinese population who’s educated enough to search to begin with.

Yahoo’s 2% From Mobile?

Lots of talk today about a SearchIgnite/RSBC study on Q3 search spend. The finding: search spending in Yahoo is up 2% over last quarter. My question: how much of the uptick represents a Yahoo dominance in mobile search?

Marissa Meyer, Google SVP of Product Development, once discussed the summertime drop in desktop-browser search and corresponding uptick in mobile search. Both are caused by people leaving their desks and using their hand-helds when the weather gets warm. If marketers are responding well to Yahoo summertime advertising, is that a 1) vote in favor of Yahoo overall—or 2) a reaction to more use of Yahoo mobile that’s affecting the marketing mix? If it’s #2, we might see Yahoo’s 2% spend gain drop down again when the weather gets cold.