Yahoo! is a web service provider which was established in California in 1995 and is owned by Verizon Communications. Yahoo is known to provide solutions like emails, directories, search engine and web portals. It is available in various languages and is used by internet users around the world. It became extremely popular when it was first introduced, but later faced intense competition from Google and became a second choice for people when it came to search engine. Later, Google operated on the similar model as Yahoo, became the pioneer among the web service providers. Yet, Yahoo holds its own place in the industry and it is primarily due to certain factors that act as competitive advantage for Yahoo.
One of these reasons includes the fact that Yahoo is full of services. It provides all kinds of solutions for everything that the users are looking for under one web portal. When users sign up for Yahoo, they sign up for services including search engine, email, news, entertainment, shopping and any kind of information that anyone might be looking for. The fact is that despite so much hype of Google around the world, Yahoo still maintains its place and is still visited by millions of users every day. They have a very strong data base that supports their user data and the loyal users of Yahoo are not willing to switch and still continue to use Yahoo. So it has maintained to be that one stop portal for users where they can find solution to everything they are looking for on the internet. And due to this, they have some very old loyal customers who have found themselves not being able to switch to any other competitors and still continue to use Yahoo in their daily lives.
One of the major strengths of Yahoo is its advertising business. Yahoo has a huge number of advertisers who add up to their revenues each day. Despite Google being the leader in that too and surpassing the revenues of Yahoo by a huge number, Yahoo still continues to be a major influencer in terms of advertising. It has attracted the advertisers since its establishment and continues to grow in that aspect to date.
It is noticeable that despite Yahoo having a competitive advantage and a considerable amount of users signing up every day, Yahoo is still lagging behind in terms of development and innovation. This is the reason that the hype of Yahoo is decreasing each year and the market is being dominated by Google. With development in terms of technology, Yahoo has to keep up with the changing trends and provide users something innovative and unique that would make them stand out among their competitors and compel their users to switch from Google, which is a clear leader in the industry at the moment.
References
Boswell, W. A Quick Guide to Yahoo. Retrieved December 27, 2017, from https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-yahoo-3483209
Dee, D. Yahoo and Amazon: Building a Competitive Advantage Strayer University BUS599 -Strategic Management. Retrieved December 27, 2017, from http://www.academia.edu/9340287/Yahoo_and_Amazon_Building_a_Competitive_Advantage_Strayer_University_BUS599_-Strategic_Management
Schonfeld, E. (2012, January 4). Scott Thompson: Yahoo’s Competitive Advantage Is Its Data. Retrieved December 27, 2017, from https://techcrunch.com/2012/01/04/thompson-yahoo-competitive-advantage-data/