Yahoo is ready to return to search, Microsoft know how much?

Re/code in weeks ago first revealed: Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's CEO, put forward a very bold push plan: Yahoo will regain its search business. This means that the Internet giant is ready to try again to stand on the search market after Yahoo signed the "search business to Microsoft 10" in 2009. Some of the information I get from inside the company is shared in this article, so that we can learn more about the Mayer program.

As previously reported in the media, Mayer is trying to get Yahoo to compete with Google Microsoft in order to master Yahoo's core financial resources. She is said to have signed two orders on the surface, possibly allowing Yahoo to re-examine its search algorithms and search advertising research.

These two projects can be very serious. Their code names inside Yahoo are "Fastbreak"( quick break ) and "curveball" ( Arc Ball ), both of which are derived from sports, representing basketball and rugby respectively. Two projects are connected in tandem rather than combined. According to relevant sources: these two projects belong to the field of search mechanism and monetization area respectively.

Ms. Mayer is trying to consolidate what it calls "3S (stream-information flow, shopping-, search-search)," according to people who know more about the plan. The main focus of Yahoo Search project is not the web and keywords (Yahoo has signed a deal with Microsoft to allow Microsoft to serve its search and advertising cooperation agreement for the next 10 years), and Mayer's goal is mobile search and contextual search (contextual).

"Contextual search techniques have made me very excited," he said. "To build this service, the amount of information is unbelievable," Ms. Mayer said at a meeting of Goldman Sachs investors in San Francisco last week. ”

Unlike keywords (mainly user input) search, contextual search uses a variety of data that users share, including digital forms and various symbolic information in the real world. This is a hot spot in the Mobile world, where users have been sending out all kinds of information when using their mobile phones, which can be exploited by Yahoo and marketers.

Mobile search is also a way out. Since the field has grown in size and importance, it has been serviced by Yahoo. More importantly, as long as the query is not based on keyword search, Yahoo is a big deal with the loophole available: So Yahoo's behavior will not be bound by the agreement signed with Microsoft (Yahoo and Microsoft's deal is to let Microsoft Proxy yahoo keyword search and advertising business).

The deal, signed by Yahoo in 2009, cut off the wild hope of becoming a real search engine.

Yahoo. Many people think this is a huge mistake. "It's like being half pregnant. The company cannot outsource one of its two core businesses to a third party, and these transactions never reach the intended target. "A person familiar with the situation said. He highlighted the "ripple effect" of the deal: a massive outflow of top talent, constraining the pace of Yahoo's product development and delaying the development cycle.

In addition, according to the Yahoo who exchanged with Ms. Mayer, "as long as Mayer can find a way to circumvent the agreement without betting on Yahoo's fate, she will try." She hates the deal. ”

In fact, Mayer has tried to use legal means to delay the implementation of the agreement. Try but not delay the pay-for-search market in Taiwan and Hong Kong to Microsoft. As I did in November about the matter: "In other words: According to the leaked news, company CEO Mayer wanted to (and she still wants to) get rid of the search partnership with Microsoft, but the reality is that Yahoo has failed to prevent the deal from being implemented globally." Yahoo remains helpless. ”

Interestingly, Yahoo is trying to apply the law, and has used Microsoft's CEO transition as a pretext for slowing the deal. But now that Microsoft has chosen internal executives, Nadra, as CEO, the next development is more interesting. Nadra, who has been in charge of Bing technology research and Development, is a key leader in Microsoft's online service when Microsoft and Yahoo set up a search agreement. Ms. Mayer once searched for products (not technology) at Google, and the two-bit will struggle against the scope of the search agreement.

We will find some clues about the changes in the search agreement in the March Yahoo earnings. In recent earnings, we have found that for Yahoo, revenue from search is becoming more important, with revenues from Microsoft's search agreement accounting for 31% of its total revenue, much higher than investors expect.

Yahoo's performance is weak, so Yahoo and Microsoft's agreement will continue to update:

The following is an introduction to the agreement in the Yahoo company statement:

Under this agreement, after a 18-month transition to the Microsoft platform for a paid search service, Microsoft wants to ensure Yahoo's search revenue (RPS) for any market in which the search revenue (Revenue per search, RPS) is different before or after the transition period or some other factor. Garantie). Typically, when RPS in the quarter, Microsoft has to keep Yahoo's quarterly earnings at a fixed RPS amount. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Microsoft agreed to extend the RPS guarantee to March 2013 in the United States and Canada. In the second quarter of 2013, Microsoft extended the U.S. RPS guarantee to March in 2014. In June 2013, Microsoft and Yahoo reached a consensus that Microsoft had paid RPS on December 31, 2012, March 31, 2013 and June 30, 2013 on a quarterly basis. The company agreed to pay the quarterly quota to replace the United States region September 30, 2013, December 31, 2013 and March 31, 2014 to determine the RPS guarantee. In addition, the company has agreed to waive future RPS guarantees in any other area other than the Taiwan and Hong Kong markets.

This may happen again, although I anticipate a change in relations between the two sides, after all, and Ms. Mayer will continue to work to improve her search arms.

Ms. Mayer has made numerous challenges and attempts, including recruiting top engineers, pulling Yahoo's assets/personnel out of the troubled right Media exchange and leveling them to the ARC Ball Project team. Interestingly, Yahoo has recently signed a 10 million-dollar order-an agreement with Carnegie Mellon University to allow researchers to use a tool called Mobile Toolkit to access Yahoo's online data within five years.

Several executives said the company's overall goal was to end Yahoo's reliance on display advertising alone (the company's business has also fallen significantly) and to shift the main business to the information and search ads driven by contextual search products.

Sources say Yahoo's aim is to regain control of its destiny (rather than hand it over to Microsoft). "Mayer wants Yahoo to control her own destiny," one of the executives close to the situation said, "That's the core issue for her." ”

In fact, at Goldman Sachs investors ' meeting, Mayer stressed that Yahoo needs to go beyond "core search" to innovate, and that the acquisition of Aviate applications is part of the plan. Aviate enhances the user's mobile home screen, providing information based on what the user is doing and what he or she is currently doing.

"We did a long search. Ms. Mayer said. It's true.