A Changing Online Market

The former search engine giant, Yahoo, recently announced the layoff of 2,000 employees, roughly 14% of its workforce. For some it's just another example of the quickly changing online landscape.

Sioux Falls marketing company Click Rain says the layoffs all come down to what people want and when they want it.

“Yahoo, right now, has about 13, 14% of the search market share compared to Google which has about 65, 66%," President of Click Rain Marketing Paul Ten Haken said.

Ten Haken says the layoffs are a result of Yahoo not keeping pace with the rest of the industry, mainly Google.

"Internet users started to become more specialized; like Google is just search and Facebook is just social. So, while Yahoo is trying to be all things to all people, they slowly started to loose market share to some of those more niche players," Ten Haken said.

Ten Haken says the only way it impacts his business is that now their efforts are ignoring Yahoo.

"Part of the problem is that we don't place many ads on the Yahoo ad network or on Yahoo search because they’ve become such a small player. So, more advertisers, like myself, and online marketing shops focus on the Googles of the world," Ten Haken said.

But Yahoo doesn't stand alone in the dust. The worldwide web has seen giants collapse before. Myspace was once the social network and has all but disappeared. Ten Haken says companies such as RIM, which created Blackberry, are also on their way out.

"Failure to innovate and failure to adapt to the changing consumer preferences leaves some of these tech companies in the dust and Yahoo and RIM are great examples of that," “Ten Haken said.

About four years ago, MSN offered to buy Yahoo for more than $40 billion. Today, its estimated value is less than half of that.