For the past few years Yahoo.com has struggled to keep its website and affiliates at par with its competitors, which include Google, Ask, and Bing. Yahoo has relentlessly tried to modify its site to meet the demands of its customers, as well as retain new users to visit the once sensational site. Three years ago Yahoo completely changed its design capacity for the site, going from a search engine with many links, to a website that prioritized news feed. This new integration has helped the site reach new heights, but has still left them in the dust compared to its main competitor, Google. Around the same time as Yahoo’s new design, which helped utilization and efficiency for the website, Google purchased an even bigger venture, known as YouTube. This astounding company has helped Google become a giant in their industry. In addition, Google recently has increased its stock share to over $900 per share, making it one of the highest growing stocks of this year. Yet Yahoo is still at a measly $26 per share, but has been increasing for the better part of six months. Why has Yahoo’s stock been increasing when Google has completely overwhelmed all of its competitors?

Today the answer to that question was given. According to CNN, Yahoo has purchased Tumblr for a record $1.1 billion. Clearly Yahoo is not afraid to spend money, as a famous person once said, “you need to spend money to earn it.” By purchasing Tumblr, Yahoo hopes to compete with Google at a much more even playing field. According to Wikipedia, Tumblr “is a microblogging platform and social networking website,” which “allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private.” Moreover, when Google purchased YouTube, Yahoo’s usage rate fell dramatically, and today they purchased Tumblr in hopes to change that. In addition, according to the CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, Tumblr “would allow the search engine to tap into a young, active online user base at the social network.” She goes on to say that our goal is to “engage Internet users and get them excited about using Yahoo again.”

I firmly believe that Google will always hold a slight edge over Yahoo, mainly because of its simplistic search engine. However, I do consider that this new business enterprise will dramatically increase user traffic on Yahoo’s website.  Do you think that Yahoo will finally be at par with Google, or will they continue to be an after thought in the search engine industry? Moreover, do you use Tumblr, and if so do you think this will prompt you to use Yahoo more often? These are questions I am very curious about, as I believe Yahoo will become a giant along side Google moving forward.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/19/technology/yahoo-tumblr/index.html