Comments on: Reflecting on AltaVista http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/12/01/reflecting-on-altavista/ Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:24:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Daniel Tunkelang http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/12/01/reflecting-on-altavista/comment-page-1/#comment-1049 Daniel Tunkelang Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:39:41 +0000 http://thenoisychannel.com/?p=879#comment-1049 Zubair, that's a great point. It's so easy today to take the pay-per-click model for granted, but it obviously created a lot more value for the search industry than the $300M or so that Google payed Yahoo to license the patent it has acquired from Overture. Of course, Google did a lot of other things right, not the least of which was separating sponsored links from organic results and only making the former be PPC. Zubair, that’s a great point. It’s so easy today to take the pay-per-click model for granted, but it obviously created a lot more value for the search industry than the $300M or so that Google payed Yahoo to license the patent it has acquired from Overture. Of course, Google did a lot of other things right, not the least of which was separating sponsored links from organic results and only making the former be PPC.

]]> By: Zubair Talib http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/12/01/reflecting-on-altavista/comment-page-1/#comment-1002 Zubair Talib Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:41:59 +0000 http://thenoisychannel.com/?p=879#comment-1002 Daniel - As always I enjoy your blog. This is an interesting reflection. I'd like to submit that one of the other challenges for AltaVista was business model and timing. AltaVista did not have a realistic, scaleable monetization strategy for their core search. As a results they started to look elsewhere for revenue and quickly become mis-aligned. Google had the benefit of a few generations of banners ad and the ad business being worked out at Overture, as well as the always on phenomenon of broadband. AltaVista was still pushing free dial-up internet at one point - Google didn't even have to think about access. With that as backdrop, Google was able to stay razor sharp focused initially and did an excellent job of staying focused on that strategy. Their ad model was also well aligned with their goals of improving their core search. At Intelligenx, we've found that search based advertising businesses cannot afford to separate their story for their users from their story for their advertisers. They must be consistent AND both the usage and monetization stories must make sense. Daniel – As always I enjoy your blog. This is an interesting reflection. I’d like to submit that one of the other challenges for AltaVista was business model and timing.

AltaVista did not have a realistic, scaleable monetization strategy for their core search. As a results they started to look elsewhere for revenue and quickly become mis-aligned. Google had the benefit of a few generations of banners ad and the ad business being worked out at Overture, as well as the always on phenomenon of broadband. AltaVista was still pushing free dial-up internet at one point – Google didn’t even have to think about access.

With that as backdrop, Google was able to stay razor sharp focused initially and did an excellent job of staying focused on that strategy. Their ad model was also well aligned with their goals of improving their core search.

At Intelligenx, we’ve found that search based advertising businesses cannot afford to separate their story for their users from their story for their advertisers. They must be consistent AND both the usage and monetization stories must make sense.

]]>