Yahoo’s Bad Decisions……..
February 24, 2008
I was reading a post a couple days ago by Erick Schonfeld, talking about how after searching for The Pirate Bay (a Bittorrent search engine). It was about how Yahoo no longer brings up The Pirate Bay, after they (The Pirate Bay) were raided by Swedish Officials.**aside**For those of you that don’t know what a Torrent is, it is a file that can be used to download media, for free, much like Kazaa or Limewire, but allows the users to post comments, view the contents of files, and see ratings from other users. (Much better than Kazaa or Limewire)**end of aside**I did the same search as Erick, but Yahoo provided me the link to this Torrent Search engine. I don’t know if it was just a glitch by Yahoo, or if they did take it off their search result database or whatever, but still, this does not look to favorably on Yahoo. If Yahoo wishes to remain a competitor with Google, they shouldn’t have blocked searches for certain webpages. In my experience in the past (I use only Google now), if a search engine didn’t come up with desirable results, I would simply use a different search engine until I could find one that fitted my needs, and then I would favor the search engine over others that did not provide me with what I wanted.Even if Yahoo COULD get into trouble by “promoting” the use of free torrent search engines, they would most likely be able to get out of it in a legal case because they are not the ones providing the public with illegal movies, or music. And on top of that, what is legal fees worth to a company that could potentially ruin they’re reputation if they try to dodge a bullet early? —Jerry
UPEI - BUS442.0 
February 25, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I think it kind of ruins the credibility and the “purity” of their searches. If they are censoring searches what is stopping them from accepting payment to make sure certain sites are at the top of the search lists?
In my opinion it is kind of the same thing. Yahoo! should do their job, they are a search engine and in my eyes they aren’t responsible for the content on the web.
February 27, 2008 at 12:37 am
I agree, Yahoo should continue to offer what the user wants to search for. I think a main problem that this brings up is that a lot of companies are blocking what technology is creating. Instead of figuring out ways to make money with what is happening – they are trying to go after the people for creating this new technology. An example being the music industry – who is going after companies for making these sites to download free music, movies etc.. I think companies would be a few steps ahead if they embraced new technology. I think there will be much more technology created in upcoming years that will make companies change there business plan. Companies shouldn’t forget that the consumer is the main reason for a lot of business in the world. For example if people are downloading a lot of free movies of the internet, this should tell the companies that maybe 1. dvds could be priced cheaper, why not sell for a lower price and sell more quantity, which would probably increase more profit. 2. maybe offer more of a choice to the consumer through the internet, maybe membership fees per month to download your favourite movies.
Blocking searches on yahoo in my opinion won’t solve too much.
February 28, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I find this to be interesting. It never occurs to me to use any other Search engine other than Google. I have a Dell computer..does that have anything to do with it?? I only ever think of Yahoo in terms of mail..never a search engine. I looked up different search engines and found quite a few that I have never heard of such as AltaVista, Web Crawler, Hotbot, Yahoo and so on…
February 28, 2008 at 8:07 pm
You never heard of other search engines other than Google? When I first started going on the internet regularly……..(Jr. High) I used and only used Webcrawler. Then my Dad introduced me to AltaVista. I used that for many years until i don’t know why, but I started using Google. I havent looked back. There is also another search engine, that searches the search engines:) Its called Copernic. Not for Macs, but you PC users should give it a try.
February 28, 2008 at 8:42 pm
A search engine I used in Highschool on a regular basis was Ask Jeeves. I always use google now, as it seems like routine just to type in google.com. It’s the first search engine that comes to my mind when I want to search for somethin gon the internet.