Yahoo’s acquisition of del.icio.us today (December 9, 2005) further emphasizes that that Yahoo is serious about moving forward with offering Web 2.0 applications and services. The move to acquire the popular social bookmarking and tagging service coupled with the previous acquisition of Flickr the popular public photo sharing application further solidifies a strategy that should offer Yahoo several options going forward.
So what does Yahoo plan to do now that they have both of these tagging services on board? It is my estimation that there are three possible options:
1.) Create a new product – Yahoo could use the del.icio.us and Flickr acquisitions to create a user generated search engine similar to Pluck’s Shadows product. Or they could create some other product that uses the tagging and bookmarking components.
2.) Integrate into an existing product – Yahoo could integrate these new tagging components into their current search offerings similar to the way that they have blended blog search into the news search results.
3.) Keep the products separate – Of course this is the path of least resistance but I find it hard to imagine that Yahoo would acquire these products without a bigger strategy in mind.
I just wonder how a company like Yahoo can continue to fly somewhat “under the radar” while a company like Google, who is probably its fiercest rival, is making similar moves and Google's stock continues to hang around $400 a share. Is Google overvalued?
Check out the del.icio.us blog for more details on the acquisition. Additionally, the blogosphere is buzzing for the del.icio.us acquisition on posts from Newsome.org, Scattered, Joho the Blog and Zoli's Blog.
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Great post.
I think something close to #2 will happen. Yahoo will integrate del.ico.us into Yahoo MyWeb, then integrate the enhanced Yahoo MyWeb into their regular search results, possibly as another tab.
I have some thoughts on Yahoo's acquisition here:
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2005/12/yahoo_acquiring_delicous_expla.html
One feature I hope Yahoo ads to Flickr is permissions on bookmarked content. I don't mind having my bookmarks counted toward popularity, but I don't necessarily want to share everything I'd bookmark with the whole world. Flickr and Yahoo MyWeb both make this easy today.
Posted by: Ed Kohler | Sunday, December 11, 2005 at 02:41 PM