Jerry Yang (楊致遠), a co-founder of Yahoo Inc in 1994, was born in Taiwan and raised in California. Talking to the local media while on a short visit to his hometown yesterday, he shared his plans for navigating the world's largest Internet portal through cyberspace.
Question: Can you talk about your competition with Google, which is now the world's most-used search engine?
Jerry Yang: I think so far, there is no search engine, regardless of it being Yahoo, Google, MSN or AOL, which is capable of providing a perfect search solution. Currently, 50 percent of search results fail to match the search parameters. Technology is the key to closing that gap. Thus, we have been constantly investing in and improving our search technology. The buy-out of Overture Services Inc last year is an example of our efforts, as it helped us to enhance search technology and expand the pay-for-performance search business. Besides, as Microsoft also uses our technology, it means that nearly 50 percent of all searches in the world use Yahoo technology. This coverage gives us the advantage of learning more about consumer behavior and what they want to find, which is a foundation for us to improve ourselves on.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Q: What is the biggest challenge for Yahoo? What is the next step for Internet portal operators such as Yahoo?
Yang: As the rate of Internet use keeps growing, it is becoming a daily necessity for the younger generations, rather than something new as it is to people my age. This will entail a fundamental change of the Internet environment derived from higher expectations. Therefore, we need to come up with more products and services to meet users' needs. One of our plans, which is also a trend for the portal business, is personalization. By providing personalized service, we can integrate users' applications such as search, e-mail, online shopping and others, making it more users friendly.
Q: What did Yahoo and the Internet industry learn from the Internet bubble in 2000? Is there another bubble in the future that may pop?
Yang: One lesson we learned from the bubble is that we shouldn't try to do everything. Now we focus on e-commerce, search and content and try our best to enhance these three divisions to serve our users. We try not to hastily jump into a fad until we see a critical mass to support the business. I think as long as a market is rapidly growing, there will always be bubbles out there. To avoid another burst is to create a good business model, based on a long-term view and commitment to the industry, which is what I'm doing now.
Q: Yahoo performed well in Taiwan after merging with Kimo in 2001. However, you seem to be falling behind your competitors in China. What is the major reason for the setback?
Yang: Internet portal businesses in China didn't start to thrive until last year, when the wireless model (sending short messages from Internet portals) boosted up the sector. To catch up with other players, last year we acquired Beijing 3721 Technology Co (北京三七二一科技) -- a portal that 90 percent of Chinese Internet users access -- to increase our market presence, and forged an auction joint venture with sina.com (新浪).
I think China is a massive market that can accommodate more than one player. With our technology and partnership, I believe we'll be competitive in the market.
Q: Do you consider the gaming and short message service (SMS) sectors to be the stars of the industry?
Yang: Yahoo now acts as a distributor for online game developers, which enables our users to order gaming products and form social networks. As for the SMS sector, we have worked with local telecommunication carriers to provide the service, but Taiwan charges high rates for SMS, so I think we will work with telecom providers in other fields such as data transfer, auctions, e-mail and instant messaging, in the view that the wireless Global Packet Radio Services (GPRS) is likely to be widely adopted by local cellphone users soon.
Q: Are you satisfied with Yahoo's online advertising income since online ads are considered a powerful marketing tool?
Yang: I'm pleased with the cash brought in by online ads, but there is still huge room for growth. The coverage of the Internet is so high that consumers on average spend 20 percent to 30 percent of their time on the Web. However, advertisers outlay merely 2 percent to 3 percent of their advertising budgets on the Internet.
So we will keep boosting this sector. One achievement is bringing in more small and medium sized enterprises to use our Web-search advertising, which posts advertisers' Web sites alongside search results and charges by the number of hits they receive.
Q: Spam has become a major nuisance in cyberspace. How do you perceive this problem?
Yang: I think the issue needs to be sorted out by technology. Several companies have invested in developing anti-spam software. Second, the industry needs to seek help from law enforcement, from both local governments and national governments, since it is an international issue. Yahoo and major Internet companies including Microsoft Corp, Time Warner Inc and America Online on Wednesday filed lawsuits against hundreds of spammers in the US under a new law. I hope the pattern will soon be adopted in other regions.
Q: What do you plan to do after you retire from Yahoo?
Yang: I think I will be a Yahoo lifer, since I still have a lot of passion for it. The Internet is becoming the most important medium, because it is unrestricted from time and space. The Internet revolution has, and will continue, to bring profound influence on people's life and culture, making it more potential than the time I established Yahoo. Therefore, I will keep contributing to this field to explore the potential of this technology, as well as my own brainchild, until I'm too old to move.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
RSS