What Would It Take To Get You To Switch?
Elinor Mills posts that Yahoo sent out a survey asking what people would require in order to switch full time to using Yahoo Search. Its an interesting idea, and might be the one killer way to stem the market share losses to Google. The list of incentives in the survey:
- No Yahoo Mail ads.
- Unlimited Yahoo Mail storage, versus the one gigabyte now provided for free.
- Outlook Access to Yahoo Mail. Users could use Outlook or Outlook Express to manage their Yahoo Mail as well as download and read it while offline. This is not currently offered.
- Five free music downloads a month for playing on a PC or portable MP3 player.
- Discounted music subscriptions. Users would pay nothing for the first month of unlimited access to Yahoo Music Unlimited and $3.99 a month thereafter, rather than $6.99 a month for unlimited access.
- Donations to charity. Yahoo would give a percentage of revenues generated from user searches to nonprofit organizations of the users’ choice.
- PC-to-phone calling credit. Users could receive $5 in calling credit per month for PC-to-phone calls over Yahoo Messenger with Voice, which costs 15 cents a minute.
- Netflix discount. Users could receive one month free Netflix DVD rentals and pay $10.99 thereafter, rather than $17.99 a month.
- Discounted Yahoo Personals subscription. Users could receive the first month free for joining Yahoo Personals and pay $19.95 thereafter, compared to the current cost of $24.95 a month.
- Frequent flyer miles. Users could earn 250 frequent flyer miles each month that could be transferred to most major airline mileage programs.
Its a tough call. 3,000 miles a year doesn’t add up that great, unless a free trip after a bunch of years is your thing. Saving $7 a month on Netflix seems like the top deal. $5 a month in VOIP credits is useless if you’re charging 15 cents a minute (now, $5 in Skype credits might tempt more).
Ultimately, if Yahoo wants people to switch, they’d have to pay a lot, since having to use a search engine makes it harder to get used to it. They’d probably have to pay more than its worth.
I’ve got an idea: Why not pay bloggers to switch for a year? No requirements, just switch. Given that most bloggers would blog it extensively, reviewing the search engine, learning its eccentricities, and hopefully giving it a fair shake they might not otherwise, now that would be worth the money spent. Hell, forget the money, I would switch for a year if it would get me to important conferences!
(via Thomas Hawk)
The left out the most important option:
No user data stored, or for the very least give the user complete control over what is stored (e.g. the ability to delete search history).
That would of course not get me to switch, since I have done so already.
Comment by Karl-Friedrich Lenz | February 9, 2006
More international, and less US centric content is already making me look closely at using Yahoo’s services.
In fact, as an Australian wanting to read and use local content, buy from local shops, view local maps etc, it is already obvious to me that Yahoo are way ahead of Google on this.
Comment by David McDonald | February 9, 2006
[…] Meanwhile, Yahoo may be trying to boost its market share by researching a customer loyalty strategy. Poor Yahoo: It really is an excellent service, as well as a first-mover in the enterprise space that Google is going great guns after now, partnering early on with Tibco. I wonder when we are going to see the payoff from the ticker plant it is building? It really wants to be the real-time OSBB (open-source Bloomberg box), but when I tried out the trial subscription to its real-time quotes, the Java applet failed. […]
Pingback by The New Market Machines » Blog Archive » Personal Search Lurch | February 9, 2006
Well, I think the goal is just to deride the comments of the Yahoo executive who said they would never be able to compete with Google in terms of search capabilities.
Comment by Judah | February 9, 2006
Quite how they will make sure you are not secretly using Google isn’t really clear though
Comment by Mark | February 9, 2006
Wow. Tough one. I doubt they could make me switch to Yahoo Search - they’d probably have to hire me.
Why am I using Google? Gmail, with POP3 access, Google Toolbar with all those neat extra buttons, Google Desktop searching my Web History. And you’ll have to beat EVERYTHING, not match them, to make me switch.
They’d have to do something Google doesn’t, because what they do, they’ll make sure they have all the features I really need. Offer DRMless content that Google offers with DRM. Create an easy search engine that can find out what kind of music track is embedded in thisfile.mp2/thisfile.mp4. Give me Linux equivalents of Windows software that aren’t already there. Just some weird suggestions.
They can’t win from Google, I guess… Even Google seems to have a hard time winning from their own older products - their latest betas aren’t even worth downloading for free, if you’re already using the last non-beta.
They’ll have to evade Google, or they can probably forget about me. And their index is still too small as well.
Granted, Google isn’t perfect. Their cache is completely broken, they no longer display snippets with every result, and I have to admit I like Yahoo’s search bar that allows you to switch the search type without directly showing the results, allowing you to refine/alter your search first. Plus, they no longer respond to my feedback, which used to be so cool. Perhaps I should start working at Google… >.>
Comment by Tim | February 9, 2006
[…] Quotes « Dissecting Gmail Published 0 minutes ago –> ยป Yahoo’s incentives to switch suck (for a few reasons). First, I don’t see a single thing that interests me. If Yahoo paid me, I’d gladly switch over and use it (exclusively). I doubt that will happen but hey, I love to complain/rave about anything and everything. Wait, here’s an idea: make your stuff work better than the other guys. How is it easier to spend money on consumers rather than the product? This old quote is straight from the Yahoo Blog “This commitment to being the best should be crystal clear from our investments in talented people, research, innovation and new products“. Where do the incentives fit in that list of investments? […]
Pingback by Devin Reams | Switch to Yahoo!? | devinreams.com | February 9, 2006
There is no way I’m changing! Not for all the tea in china
Comment by Stephen | February 9, 2006
For me to use Yahoo search, it would need to change the way it looks. Actually they should really tweak some of the colors they are using as it looks a bit dull. Also, in place of where the ad section is, there should be the top five results from its blog search, and below that the top five results from its news search. And if possible results from delicious and flickr but I am still unsure about these two.
Comment by Sutiben | February 9, 2006
How about not giving the government all my information and search tendecies? Oh, and better search results.
Comment by Jason Schramm | February 9, 2006
While personally, I don’t think that I would give up Google for only $7, I do think that the program shouldn’t be dismissed so quickly. Google has an amazing search engine, there is no doubting that you are #1. On the other hand, not all of us are power net users and there are a lot of mainstream casual surfers who would quickly embrace the subsidizes that are being offered.
This would be an innovative move on Yahoo’s part. I don’t know how much one makes off of each user per month, but if it’s more then $3 dollars, then it could be a lucrative investment for the company. You can mock them, but believe me the public will accept this program because search isn’t woth $7 per month to them.
The real risk that I see is that they end up attracting their core base instead of defectors. This could prove costly. Then again they could just keep it in beta for three years and take it away if it turned out to be unprofitable.
Comment by davis freeberg | February 10, 2006
Keep in mind, you aren’t giving up Google for $7, but for $7 a month. That can be 20% of your DSL bill. A lot of people would do it, if it saves them on things they already buy.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | February 10, 2006