Oh, this is too funny. In the red corner we have fightin' and spittin'Jeremy Zawodny, from Yahoo and in the blue corner mean lean Matt Cutts from Google.
Ding Ding! Round one and Jeremy comes out fighting, and he's straight in on Google... complaining that Google has ripped off a Yahoo page 'it's time to upgrade to IE7'. He follows this up with a swift upper cut, with a copy of the Yahoo version and then hammers home with a body blow showing the Google version. Cutts is reeling out here folks... Zawodny has him up against the ropes, Cutts with his gloves up, unable to come up with any sort of response.... Zawodny is really in his stride now, and he's raining blows down now.... 'WTF is that about?', 'uninspired', 'it's not a template MS gave its partners'.
It looks as though it's all going to be over inside the first round - the only response Google can make is to update their page to make look less like the Yahoo version.
Ding Ding! End of round one. The audience are whooping it up over in Zawodny's corner, though there's also a lot of confusion - is it possible Google could have been that stupid? Does Microsoft have a role to play in this? Is there going to be a round 2?
Ding Ding! Start of round two. Cutts is looking very sluggish, there's no doubt about it, and this fight could be all over... Cutts is - yes, he's apologising! "It sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution". Zawodny raises his arms in triumph, and turns back towards his corner and his adoring fans....
But what's this... Cutts has his gloves up! He's not giving up - perhaps he's merely been selling Zawodny a feint? Zawodny hears the roar from the crowd and turns around, straight into a Cutts upper cut as Cutts mentions that Yahoo copied the look and feel of the Google AdWords results. Ohhhhh, that's gotta hurt - Cutts just planted a right hook in the Zawodny bread basket with the point that Yahoo copied Google again when it came to changing their ads, and he's following it up with the point that Yahoo changed their ads to be the same number of characters as Google.
Now it's Zawodny who is looking shaky, and he's backed into his corner as Cutts has got centre stage - who IS going to win this battle of the titans?
Ding ding! End of round three. Is there going to be a round three? Tune in at the same time, same channel tomorrow to watch the next thrilling bout of 'Titans with handbags'.
Brilliant, Phil! There they are, having a major ding-dong but, if the gang I was training yesterday are anything to go by, the punters don't care. They were busy sussing out Ask, Live, Livesearch [Yes, I know they are owned by Yahoo :-)], Exalead, Accoona News, Trovando and umpteen other search tools that are far better at delivering the goods. Their attitude to Google and Yahoo can be summed up by a comment from a workshop participant last week: "Google and Yahoo? They are *sooooo* yesterday".
Karen
Posted by: Karen Blakeman | December 12, 2006 at 05:28 PM