Stan Beer
Monday, 03 November 2008 08:13
Opinion and Analysis
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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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