In business news it seems like everybody is talking about the recent financial numbers made public about Yahoo and Google. It seems as if Google has taken an incredible chunk of the market share from it’s #1 competitor Yahoo. Google’s first quarter revenue was $3.66 billion dollars while Yahoo’s was only $1.67 billion. I say “only”, but even so, Yahoo’s revenue came in at less than HALF of what Google has raked in thus far in 2007.

This leads me to do some thinking about the two search engine giants (Ok maybe there is just one giant now, but you know what I mean). Yahoo and MSN were the top two search engines up until the late 90’s. In 1999 that began to change with the arrival of Google onto the scene. Google’s homepage was bland, yet eye-catching. It provided users with a quick and easy search form without having to read the latest news headlines, weather reports, and horoscopes. Best of all, Google offered users the convenience of searching ALL of the other popular search engines at once. The results from each were sorted and displayed in standard Google fashion. Google did not start out having it’s own algorithms, let alone massive data-centers. That all came later as more money came in. But what was Google really? At first glance some might think it was a search engine, which in fact it was. But, there was something far more worthwhile within Google that even Yahoo did not catch on to until years later. Google was building what would soon become the largest advertising network on the internet. Enter AdWords and AdSense.

AdWords provided anybody the ability to advertise on any website related to their product or service. As long as enough website owners published “AdSense” code on their pages the Google data center would spit out relevant ads from it’s advertiser database. As AdWords and AdSense became more and more successful Google began to offer high quality products such as Google Earth and GMail for free. By integrating contextual advertising into all Google products, they have been able to keep all of their services free to users while money from advertisers pushed Google ahead significantly in the business world. The name Google quickly became a household name. If you wanted to search for something online you would simply “Google” it. Google had become the Kleenex of the internet.

Enter Yahoo. Well, that’s what they would like you to think. Yahoo certainly has a large userbase as well but as far as I can tell they are on their way to becoming the CNN of the internet. They are a news and entertainment portal that ALSO happens to be a search engine. They are by far better than MSN, but that’s not saying much. MSN has never been known for it’s coolness or popularity. In fact it seems that MSN is only used by people who do not know how to change their homepage when they buy a new Windows based computer (And even those people will eventually switch to Google when they get hit with a homepage changing virus or script). Anyway, Yahoo has definitely made some wise decisions in the recent years as well. They picked up del.icio.us, HotJobs and Mapquest. It’s hard to frown on those purchases, but in the end it was Google who got the pick of the litter with the purchase of video sharing giant “YouTube” last year.

Google’s highly successful advertising formula has become an internet phenomenon. Yahoo launched the “Yahoo Publisher Network” a few years ago and just recently Microsoft launched “Content Ads”, both similar to the AdWords concept. In the end, as the popular saying goes, “Duplication is the greatest form of flattery”. Google has not only reinvented the wheel, but has set new standards as well. In with the new and out with the old as they say. I don’t expect Yahoo or MSN to bite the big one anytime soon, but they both need to watch their backs. Exactly 10 days ago I blogged about Google. At the time, Google stock prices were at$466.29 per share. Today the GOOG symbol shows a last trade value of $479.08.