Yahoo's Strategy

James Fallows, normally seen in the Atlantic, had a good overview article in the Sunday NYT about Yahoo's business strategy. Like him, I've never quite known what to make of Yahoo; it always seemed like the Web equivalent of a mega-mall -- you could find just about anything there, and while it may not be exactly what you're looking for, it'll work in a pinch and you can't beat the convenience.

Well, Yahoo isn't satisfied with being just a one-stop-shop portal, it's got big ambitions to change the way we use Web search by adding social engineering. You can check out Fallows' article for details, but essentially the concept involves augmenting traditional search with information about which results people like you (i.e. with similar interests or in your social network) found most relevant when doing similar searches. Think of extending Amazon's book recommendations ("Customers who bought this book also bought") to every possible search term. It's an intriguing concept and I'll be interested to see how it works, but let's just say I'm skeptical that it will improve on the Google Page Rank algorithm. In fact, I can see the risk for inferior results by eliminating potentially-relevant sites due to insufficient hits by one's 'network' (sort of the Groupthink phenomenon afflicting search).