How Yahoo Blew Its Chance to Rule the World

[mandy]

Semel could talk tough because he had a backup plan. Yahoo would go out and buy its own top-notch search engine and its own search-advertising technology, and it would beat Google in the emerging arena of little text ads that pop up next to search results. Semel's decision to opt for this plan B was a fateful one. It was a smart play -- but Yahoo fumbled, bungled, and mishandled its execution at every step. (More on that in a moment.) As a result, Google today controls nearly 70 percent of the search-related advertising market, an industry worth more than $15 billion a year and growing at roughly 50 percent a year. It's these ads that are the source of Google's riches and the basis for its expanding power.

And what must infuriate Semel: This could have been Yahoo...

full article: http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/0,724...n_index_22