Only two years ago, Google and Yahoo earned the same revenue and it wasn’t obvious which one would predominate for Web searches.
You probably saw the business news. Google’s first-quarter revenue was more than twice Yahoo’s, and the gap is widening. Here’s an article comparing the two companies’ performance. (Microsoft also wants to be a player in the world of web searches and advertising, but it’s barely mentioned any more.)
Yahoo attempted to draw people to its web sites by featuring original content, including media created by the entertainment industry – and it has had some success doing that, but not enough to stay competitive with Google.
Google gets attention for its various software ventures – online office applications, Google Mail, and the like – but it’s always worth remembering that those have virtually no relevance to Google’s bottom line. Google is a company that places text ads on web pages, and it is making an unbelievable amount of money doing it.
