[翻译]互联网战略：反Google联盟（Internet strategy：The alliance against Google）

Aug 10th 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

洛杉矶，2006年8月10日，《经济学人》印刷版


    What today's internet firms can learn from 19th-century history

    今天的互联网公司可以从19世纪的历史中得到什么启示？

     PRINCE KLEMENS VON METTERNICH, foreign minister of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, would have no trouble recognising Google. To him, the world's most popular web-search engine would closely resemble the Napoleonic France that in his youth humiliated Austria and Europe's other powers. Its rivals—Yahoo!, the largest of the traditional web gateways, eBay, the biggest online auction and trading site, and Microsoft, a software empire that owns MSN, a struggling web portal—would look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Metternich responded by forging an alliance among those three monarchies to create a “balance of power” against France. Google's enemies, he might say, ought now to do the same thing.

     梅特涅，拿破仑时代奥地利帝国的外交部长，会毫无疑问地这样看待Google.对他来说，这个世界上最流行的Web搜索引擎与拿破仑法兰西帝国类似，而正是这个帝国使他所在的年轻的奥地利以及欧洲其他列强受辱。Google的对手――Yahoo!，世界上最大的传统门户网站；eBay,最大的在线拍卖和交易网站，以及MicroSoft,拥有MSN（一个不断努力前进的门户网站）的软件帝国――就好比是俄国，普鲁士和奥地利。梅特涅当年就是通过在三个帝国间建立一个联盟来与法兰西帝国对抗，从而形成彼此间“力量的均衡”的。他也许会说， Google的敌人现在也应该这样做。

 

    Google announced two new conquests on August 7th. It struck a deal with Viacom, an “old” media firm, under which it will syndicate video clips from Viacom brands such as MTV and Nickelodeon to other websites, and integrate advertisements into them. This makes Google the clear leader in the fledgling but promising market for web-video advertising. It also announced a deal with News Corporation, another media giant, under which it will provide all the search and text-advertising technology on News , an enormously popular social-networking site.Corporation's websites, including MySpace

     Google在8月7日宣布了它取得了两个新的突破。它与一家老牌的名为“Viacom”的媒体公司签署了一项协议，协议中规定Google将从Viacom的MTV和自动点唱机等产品中提取视频片段给其他网站，并且还会集成进一些广告。这就使得Google在互联网视频广告这个新兴而富有前景的行业处于显著的领导地位。此外，它还宣布与另一家媒体巨头－News公司签署了一项协议，Google将为News公司的所有网站提供其所有的搜索和文本广告技术，这些网站中包括MySpace,一个有名的大型社交网站。 

    These are hard blows for Yahoo! and MSN, which had also been negotiating with News Corporation. Both firms have been losing market share in web search to Google over the past year—Google now has half the market. They have also fallen further behind in their advertising technologies and networks, so that both make less money than Google does from the same number of searches. Safa Rashtchy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, a securities firm, estimates that for every advertising dollar that Google makes on a
search query, Yahoo! makes only 60-70 cents. Last month Yahoo! said that a new advertising algorithm that it had designed to close the gap in profitability will be delayed, and its share price fell by 22%, its biggest-ever one-day drop.

     这些对于Yahoo!和MSN来说无疑是一个沉重的打击，因为两家也都一直在和News公司进行谈判。两个公司都在过去几年里将互联网搜索的市场份额拱手让给了Google，Google现在已经拥有一半的市场份额了。它们在广告技术和网络方面也远远落后于Google，因此在相同的搜索量的基础上赚取的钱远远少于Google。Safa Rashtchy, Piper Jaffray证券公司的一位分析师估计：Google通过一次搜索查询赚取一美元的话，那么Yahoo!只能赚到60－70美分。上个月，Yahoo!称它以前决定开发的一项意在缩短与Google利润差距的新技术将被推迟，与此同时它的股价下跌了22％，这也是它股价跌幅最大的一天。

     MSN is further behind Google than Yahoo! in search, and its parent, Microsoft, faces an even more fundamental threat from the expansionist new power. Many of Google's new ventures beyond web search enable users to do things free of charge through their web browsers that they now do using Microsoft software on their personal computers. Google offers a rudimentary but free online word processor and spreadsheet, for instance. 

      MSN在搜索方面比Yahoo!更加落后于Google，而它的拥有者，MicroSoft也面临来自这个扩张性的新兴势力的更大的根本性的威胁。除了Web搜索以外，Google还进行了一些新的项目尝试，而这些产品可以让用户通过他们的Web浏览器免费进行工作，而这些工作用户一直都是在他们的个人计算机上使用MicroSoft的软件来完成的。例如，Google提供了一个简单但免费的在线文字处理器和电子制表软件。

    The smaller eBay, on the other hand, might in one sense claim Google as an ally. Google's search results send a lot of traffic to eBay's auction site, and eBay is one of the biggest advertisers on Google's network. But the relationship is imbalanced. An influential recent study from Berkeley's Haas School of Business estimated that about 12% of eBay's revenues come indirectly from Google, whereas Google gets only 3% of its revenues from eBay. Worst of all for eBay, Google is starting to undercut its core
business. Sellers are setting up their own websites and buying text advertisements from Google, and buyers are using its search rather than eBay to connect with sellers directly. As a result, “eBay would be wise to strike a deep partnership with Yahoo! or Microsoft in order to regain a balance of power in the industry,” said the study's authors, Julien Decot and Steve Lee, sounding like diplomats at the Congress
of Vienna in 1814.

     从另一方面来看，相对前面几家更小的eBay,可能会把Google视为同盟者。Google的搜索结果为eBay的拍卖网站带来了大量的访问量，而eBay也是Google的最大网络广告商。但它们之间的关系却是不平衡的。最近一项来自伯克利Haas商学院的研究表明eBay的收入有大约12％是间接来自于Google，而Google只有3％的收入来自eBay。而对eBay更糟糕的是，Google已经开始裁减它的核心业务了。买方开始建立他们自己的个人站点并且从Google那购买文本广告，而卖方则使用Google的搜索引擎而不是通过eBay来直接和买方打交道。结果，“为了在这个行业中重新建立一种力量的均衡，eBay可能会慎重考虑与雅虎或微软建立深层次的伙伴关系“，这项研究的作者Julien Decot和Steve Lee说。这两位作者听起来有点象是1814年维也纳会议上的外交官。

    The alliances are already being struck. Last year Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that they would connect their instant-messaging systems—both of which are much more popular than Google's alternative—and in July they said that they would extend this co-operation to “voice chat” (formerly known as “calling”). In May, Yahoo! and eBay struck an alliance in which eBay will use technology from Yahoo! to place dvertisements on its auction site. On the other side of the bargain, Yahoo! will use PayPal, eBay's online payment mechanism, for transactions from Yahoo!'s pages. (Google recently launched a rival payment system of its own.)

    这个联盟实际上已经有所行动了。去年Yahoo!和MicroSoft宣布它们将使各自的即时通信软件实现互联－两者的产品都要远比Google的更为流行――而在7月它们称双方将把合作扩展到“音频聊天“（即我们通常说的“呼叫”）领域。5月，Yahoo!和eBay结成了同盟，eBay将在它的拍卖网站上使用Yahoo!提供的技术来投放广告。而另一方面，Yahoo!将在其网页的支付事务中使用eBay的在线支付机制――贝宝(paypal)。（Google最近已经开始使用自己开发的一套支付系统）

    The strongest alliance, of course, would be a merger or takeover. MSN and Yahoo! both wanted to buy some or all of AOL, a big, troubled internet-access company owned by Time
Warner, a media conglomerate. But Google pre-empted its rivals last winter and bought a defensive stake in AOL. It still has its search and advertising technology stationed on AOL's site. Google may also make its instant-messaging service interoperable with AOL's, the most popular in the world.

    当然，最强大的联盟将会通过企业的兼并来产生。MSN和Yahoo!都有意购买AOL（时代华纳旗下的一家陷入困境的大型互联网接入公司）的部分或者全部股份。但Google却先于对手在去年冬天就购入了一些AOL股份来防御对手进行并购。现在AOL网站上仍然使用着Google的搜索和广告技术。Google也可能将自己的即时通信软件和世界上最流行的AOL的即时通信软件进行互通。

 Ally or annex?

联盟还是并吞？

    With AOL lost to the enemy, what of a deal between Microsoft and either Yahoo! or eBay? Justin Post, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, said recently that Microsoft's “acquisition probability” is now so high that it may soon start pushing up the share prices of eBay and Yahoo! Mr Post thinks that Microsoft is most likely to bid for Yahoo! This would help Microsoft strategically, he says. Others are not sure. “I don't see it as a terribly good merger,” says Mr Rashtchy. There would be big cultural differences between a media company and a software firm. He thinks that a merger of Yahoo! and eBay, on the other hand, might make sense because both live mainly from serving online communities.

     AOL已经落入敌手，MicroSoft，Yahoo! ，eBay之间将会发生什么交易呢？Merrill Lynch的研究员Justin Post指出, 现在MicroSoft并购的可能性”非常之高，它有可能马上会提高持有eBay与Yahoo!股票的数量！而Post先生认为MicroSoft最有可能将目标锁定为Yahoo!。他认为，这将在战略上给与MicroSoft以帮助。但其他人并不这样认为。Rashtchy先生说“我不觉得这是一项非常好的收购”。媒体企业与软件公司之间存在巨大的文化差异。相反地，他认为，eBay与Yahoo!之间的并购会更有意义，因为两者的主营业务都是在线服务。

Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley analyst and a fellow of the Institute for the Future, a research group, thinks that any merger between the three middle powers would be a “grand dramatic gesture” that would only hasten their decline. AOL's merger with Time Warner in 2000 is the relevant warning from recent history. Big mergers also run counter to a number of other trends on the internet today, which are collectively
known as “Web 2.0”. “This is the age of mash-ups not mergers, open over closed,” says Mr Saffo, referring to the open internet standards that allow users to combine, or “mash” services.
     
    硅谷分析家、未来学院（一家研究性组织）的成员之一Paul Saffo认为三个中间力量的任何并购都将成为一个“盛大的戏剧性姿态”，这只会加剧他们的没落。AOL与时代华纳在2000年的并购的教训依然历历在目。而且大型并购与当今互联网的趋势Web2.0也是背道而驰的。“这是一个发展超越并购，新公司甚于破产的时代”，Saffo先生在提及当今互联网的开放标准鼓励用户们整合或者细分服务时说道。

Another argument against full-blown mergers is that the bigger and more self-absorbed the established powers become, the less likely they are to spot new insurgencies—start-ups such as YouTube, an online video site, for instance, or MySpace. Their equivalents in Prince Metternich's day were the nationalist and liberal movements that troubled the continental monarchies, and erupted in the revolutions of 1848—forcing Metternich to resign and flee into exile in Britain. 

    另一个反对完全并购的依据就是，互联网企业越大，越追求自己制定的战略，就越难发现新的创新点。例如，YOUtube，一个在线视频网站，再如myspace。这就好比在Metternich时代扰乱欧洲大陆的主制国家的民族主义与自由主义运动一样，最终引发了1848年革命——导致梅特涅引退并流亡英国。