week 3, thing 7: another techie thing - engines linking with partners

I had noticed it before, but with bloglines, it's definitely evident. Search engines seem to have partnered with our discovery sites.

yahoo = flickr
google = blogger
ask = bloglines

What is the point of this?

"About Ask Jeeves, Inc.

As the 6th largest global web property (ComScore Media Metrix, March 2005), Ask Jeeves Inc. delivers world-class information retrieval products through a diverse portfolio of Web sites, portals and downloadable applications. Ask Jeeves' search and search-based portal brands include: Ask Jeeves (Ask.com, Ask.co.uk and es.Ask.com), the Ask Jeeves Japan joint venture (Ask.jp), Ask Jeeves for Kids (AJKids.com), Bloglines (bloglines.com), Excite (excite.com), iWon (iwon.com), My Way (myway.com) and Fun Web Products (funwebproducts.com). Additionally, Ask Jeeves owns the differentiated search technology Teoma, as well as natural language processing, portal and ad-serving technologies. Ask Jeeves generates revenue from advertisers seeking to reach the company's broad-based online audience."
from http://www.irconnect.com/askj/pages/news_releases.html?d=80865

A similar statement came from yahoo: "Why is Yahoo! Photos closing?
For some time now we’ve supported two great photo sharing services, Yahoo! Photos and Flickr. But even good things come to an end, and we’ve decided to focus all our efforts on Flickr – the award winning photo sharing site that Time Magazine has even called “completely addictive."
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/photos/photos3/closing/closing-01.html

Last week, I also saw that users of the photo service, Shutterfly, can now opt to pick their photos up at their local Target stores.


I suppose that, like other companies, search engines have to look at their audience's needs and try to meet them all. General information, specialized news, shopping, communicating with others, music, maps... little things, small things, these companies want to cast as wide a net as possible, so that you're using them (or one of their companies) for multiple tasks in your life.