No more Google Schmoogle as Sensis maps future direction in search

Stan Beer
Monday, 03 November 2008 07:13

Opinion and Analysis

The announcement today that Sensis and Google have joined forces to put all of its Yellow directory business listings on Google Maps and that it will replace its own search technology with Google's signals two things. Sensis is finally getting real and it has accepted that search is not its business.

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Sensis' parent Telstra, is famous for his arrogant off-the-cuff comment "Google Schmoogle" back in 2005. In those days, Trujillo was adamant that Sensis, Telstra's jewel-in-the-crown directories arm, could successfully compete with Google and win in the Australian market.

Today, however, Sensis is singing an entirely different tune. Sensis CEO, Bruce Akhurst, admitted to a full house of Sydney and Melbourne media that his company is no longer in the search game and that Google will be the search technology employed by the company from now on.

When asked whether today's announcement was an admission that Sensis can't do better search and maps than Google, Mr Akhurst basically said yes.

"Google clearly has fantastic technology on a global scale and bringing that to our advertisers is obviously beneficial to them," Mr Akhurst said.

"Our business is about expanding our reach and finding as many customers as we possibly can.

"From our point of view we do recognise that Google is the global technology leader in this area. They're experts in helping people find information online, so it's consistent with our philosophy of partnering up with the best in the business, we will now be able to provide world class search and sponsored listings from sensis.com.au.

"You'll also be able to search Yellow, White Pages and Trading Post from the one website. This is going to end up with us being a better user experience, more usage, more advertiser ROI for those advertising. So the outlook for Sensis.com.au (is that) we're now providing a world class benchmark service for all of our users."

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