Google fusion is My Yahoo. If there was any doubt that Google is rebuilding Yahoo pice by piece and becoming a portal, I hope it's all dispelled now. It's amusing to see Google become a fast follower of Yahoo!'s, rather than vice versa. Soon they will be twins and the only difference will be in the minds of their users, imagining subtle differences in what is even essentially the same brand.

The Google homepage seems to have come about moreso in response to customer noise, than a desire to be Yahoo! You know, keep the portal loving population happy and try out some funky client-side/Ajax technologies at the same time. It's a worthwhile ROI.

I say that, because Google makes their money by collecting user data and selling ads. Period. Ad Sense is everywhere right now. DeWitt (unto.net) has his finger on the pulse of Google's intent. In ten years, when technology is even more rampant across the physical space, tied to a database with broadband wireless, etc., converging marketing techniques will be Google's biggest "client", and Google will be poised to expand even farther with their data feeding the implementation of such efforts.

In the meantime, sure, they'll create any interface that can explicitly and quantitatively capture user desires, preferences, choices, etc. Patterns can be established from this information, more algorythyms can be developed, and the data pool increases exponentially with more and more accuracy in regards to human needs and desire.

This is the fuel for AI (in the context of marketing, specifically) and we, as a public, don't even realize that blood for oil is the least of our worries.

That's a strikingly different approach from Yahoo!'s media model. Google isn't the next Yahoo!, Google is the evil-er big brother of MicroSoft. That is, of course, if I'm right. ;)

Tthe lion share of Yahoo's income currently comes from ad sales.

Yeah, I realized after posting that I didn't mention advertising explicitly in Yahoo's "Media model" which is definitely a mis-representation. But to Christina's point, the media aspect is what sticks in the minds of their users.

Google "feels" like a smart engine with some useful interfaces and a ton of ads seen all around the web.

Yahoo! "feels" like a useful site that covers all aspects of "my life" in a vanilla taxonomy of interests (sports, news, finance, etc.).

The ad models are probably only different by degrees at this point. It's just that the extended Google model has the ability to scare the hell out of me.

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