Yahoo! operates so many web properties that it is perhaps inevitable that the company will not develop all of them to their full potential. I find it disappointing, though, that there is not more integration between the Yahoo! Publisher Network and Yahoo!'s other web services. It is still fairly common for people to build their first web page on Yahoo! GeoCities. Some are now setting up their first blogs on Yahoo! 360°. At least some of the people who everyday become content publishers for the first time using Yahoo! web services will likely end up among the professional web publishers of tomorrow. Yahoo! has a perfect opportunity to interact with these web gurus of the future by letting the little guys of today join the Yahoo! Publisher Network and earn a few cents or more with their content. Unfortunately, GeoCities forbids ads on its free pages other than those imposed directly by and for Yahoo!, and the Yahoo! Publisher Network is restricted to those webmasters who own their own domain. In short, Yahoo!'s perfect opportunity is a missed opportunity. GeoCities and 360° users will have no more reason to join the Yahoo! Publisher Network in the future than they would have had they used other services. Yahoo! has its reasons for acting as it does, no doubt: click fraud, an especially attractive temptation for small fry, would be a nightmare to police, and Yahoo! makes money by selling premium hosting on GeoCities which enables GeoCities users to escape Yahoo!'s ads. If Yahoo!'s ads were the users own ads, GeoCities users might not be so eager to get rid of them.
Another web giant takes a very different approach to hosting and to its ad network. Google's Blogger and its free webspace provider GooglePages both allow users to place AdSense ads on the blogs and web sites they create. On Blogger-hosted blogs, at least, AdSense ads are an exceedingly common sight. Google's path is good in at least two ways. First of all, Google has created an environment that encourages its users to create content and also to plaster Google ads on that content, bolstering AdSense's already enormous reach. Secondly, Google is introducing new webmasters and bloggers to AdSense early on. As some web publishers move their content away from Google servers, they will quite likely take AdSense with them because they are already familiar with it. AdSense's biggest enemy may ultimately be itself, as there is a great deal of chatter on the Internet about AdSense being too willing to ban publishers for alleged fraud.
In short, there is a big difference in how Yahoo! and Google use their free hosting services. For Yahoo!, hosting seems to be an end in itself. Google, in contrast, uses its hosting services to promote and brand its ad network.
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