8. Google vs. Yahoo

The war between Google and Yahoo has been since long. Yahoo lost to Google in the first place. At some stage Yahoo began to put the advertiser first. It stopped seeing customers as people it needed to help find what they wanted quickly.

The Yahoo homepage started off as a directory of the Web and for many years it stayed like that. However, sometime after 2000 it began to get more and more complicated and advertiser-focused. By 2004, there were 255 links on the Yahoo homepage.

Yahoo's customer is the advertiser. Google's customer is you and me. That's why Google has been more successful. Google has put the needs of the customer, not the advertiser, first. Yahoo and Google have the same advertising revenue model. However, Google isn't focused on increasing page views and ad placements but rather on increasing relevance. It is focused on making ads useful.