Yahoo Maps
It’s interesting to see how the internet has evolved since the tech boon of the late 90’s. Probably the most bizarrely intriguing thing about the dot-com era is that a lot of the ventures and businesses that sprouted up were actually very good ideas that had legitimate profit potential. The problem (or one of many problems), of course, was that venture capitalists were dishing out money to anyone and everyone that had a glimmer of an idea. The result was too many companies spending millions of dollars in stockholders’ money on hopeless business models. Once it became apparent that many of these ventures could not stand on their own two feet, the investors fled… from both the pipe dreams and the solidly grounded tech companies.
Well the dot-com’s are back. This time though, there’s only one dot-com, and this time the company has developed a solid business model through years of being a private corporation before turning to public investment dollars. Of course I’m talking about Google which made it’s initial IPO August of last year at $85 dollars a share. Since then it has almost quintupled in value at $400 dollars a share and the stock keeps going up. My question now is how high can they go? Will Google’s bubble burst? So far they have held true to their “do no evil” model by centering almost their entire revenue stream around advertising thereby allowing them to offer services for free. What has made them so popular and unique, however, is that not only are their services useful, they’re also bleeding edge, the best out there with features that people want. They have revolutionized webmail (the Gmail “conversation” feature is a simple concept but a true innovation); they have blown away all other mapping services; they have embraced and contributed to the Web 2.0 social revolution (although I would say the “Web 2.0″ is something that has evolved independently of Google); and of course they have redefined the concept of search and information finding.
Just recently, Yahoo released a beta of their new mapping service. One thing that is immediately apparent is that the rendering engine that they use looks oddly identical to Google’s. They’ve also replicated Google’s “draggable” interactive interface and included other features like traffic monitoring (not quite ready for primetime), and point-to-point driving directions (which is actually quite useful and something that Google does not have). In any case this raises the question, when will Google cease to be the best at everything? They’re trying to take on all of the giants including Microsoft (Google Desktop), Yahoo ([insert Google web service here]), and there have been rumblings of a service in the works (Google Base) which will pit them up against eBay. I’m waiting for them to come out with their own media distribution service and ruffle the feathers of iApple.
We’re seeing Yahoo react to Googlemania. We know that Microsoft will react (since that’s all they do). Can Google take on all of the giants of the tech world and still come out on top? I’m not so sure. Oh and as an aside, where are the highway exit numbers on these maps? Google? Yahoo? Mapquest has had them for years. Let’s try and keep up.
