Yahoo and Google's Recruitment Gambles

Posted by Jacob Harris Thu, 22 Dec 2005 06:07:00 GMT

Jason Kottke had a really interesting point earlier this month about Yahoo’s del.icio.us purchase that I just read today (been catching up), when he says:

There’s an interesting story in here somewhere about how Yahoo! is hiring/buying the “alpha geeks” (hackers, tinkerers, accidental entrepreneurs) and Google seemingly isn’t (Ph.Ds, computer scientists) and what effect that could have on each company’s development.

Spot on. It seems like Google has been focusing its efforts lately mainly on acquiring key smart people (even if that means buying their whole company), content acquisition (ie, Keyhole for satellite data, the sitemap protocol for deep web access), and advertising/advertising/advertising! Meanwhile, Yahoo has been looking for new talent with proven success to snap up. Their strategy could really be defined as platforms. Amazon has also been doing this to some degree through their internal Robot Coop front company, but I expect they might start buying outside sites as well if they prove successful (good luck there LibraryThing!). It’s nice for the big guys; someone else takes the risk of building the product and they can scoop it up – users and all – if it sticks.

This has been described as competing strategies of brains vs. hackers. Which is certainly true, but there are some interesting other dimensions to consider. I read an interview with Eric Schmidt of Google where he named the not invented here attitude as one of Google’s biggest concerns moving forward. And looking at their strategy, it seems like Google might be struggling with that problem now, preferring to create their own copies of existing successful products (Googlemaps and Gmail have done well, but what about Google Base or Orkut?). Of course, Yahoo is taking its own risks here (their strategy is essentially treating geeks like value stocks vs. Google’s growth stocks), but I ultimately feel they might succeed. A lot of radical web stuff lately has been done by the new people, the unknows (think Ruby on Rails or Del.icio.us), and Yahoo has been more poised to recognize it. Will their riskier unknowns best Google’s smart people with big reputations? I think so, unless Google’s hiding something really big up its sleeves to spring in 2006.

On a related note, John Battelle has published his industry predictions for 2006 and it’s an interesting read. Although he sometimes stumbles, he generally does a good job of being on the mark, as his review of 2005’s predictions shows. Check it out.