So by now I think everyone knows that to run search on Yahoo websites.  This is still waiting for regulatory approval, but chances are it will be fine since the two behemoths are not exactly merging and the combined search market of Yahoo and Microsoft is only around 35%. The word from inside Yahoo Search is that they will keep on developing their search engine for now while they wait for the final approval.  No one is fired as of now but most people in search are understandably dejected that their product is essentially being scrapped.  Personally, I think this is a perfect time for the codemonkeys in Yahoo to band together and use their search engine for one last hurrah.

I used to work for a leading shopping comparison engine that has  significantly less traffic than Yahoo, but that is where I learned about how much money a website could potentially make even if it has a miniature slice of the giant internet pie. (At that time the company I worked for had only 0.2% of all search traffic).   The Yahoo search engine supposedly has 20% of the search market, so the codemonkeys that control it really have some serious power.  Here are some of the ways they could “experiment” with the search engine in the next few months for their own profit:

• Change search results for products to websites that pay commissions and embed their own affiliate codes in the links.  By my estimate from my past experience in shopping comparison, these Yahoos only need to sign up as an affiliate for just a few major merchants and leave it running for one day to generate millions.
• Create websites with various content and manually rank them high on the Yahoo search engine.  Drive traffic to these personal websites and get advertising dollars.  This probably would not make money as quickly as tactic one, but it will build up a website very quickly and possibly generate revenue for years to come.

Are these tactics unethical?  I don’t think they are if the search engine still finds results that are relevant to the person making the query. In fact, both Microsoft and Google manually rank many search results for various reasons so it isn’t exactly a democratic process anyway.  The creators of the search engines can and do control what you see on top.  Is it an inappropriate use of company property?  Perhaps, but it may also be beneficial to Yahoo to see the results of the experiment and see if there is a business opportunity there. The worst thing that could happen is that the Yahoos will be fired.

The chances of this actually happening is fairly low since it would require  source and data changes, and releases of software the size  of the Yahoo search engine  would take the coordination of a good sized team of engineers.  When you have to involve so many people in such a project to subvert a giant corporation it is not likely to happen.   However, if they manage to actually do it correctly and let it last for a few months until the Yahoo search algorithms are taken offline then  they will probably all be rich enough to retire.    Anyway, if this happens and Yahoo search employees retire with millions in commissions or advertising money I would ask that they let me write the book on it.  It would be the ultimate sequel, and it would be hilarious.

Now my  serious comment on this whole deal is  that it is better for the internet as a whole that Yahoo is consolidating its search with Microsoft instead of Google.  If Google owned 85% to 90% of the search market then they will wield even more power than they do now.  With that much market share Google will not have any incentive to improve their product, and they will have way too much power over what internet publishers do.  Even now Google is able to bully website owners into drop certain types of advertising with the threat of banning from their search engine.  Competition is good, and  I was hoping that Yahoo would beat Google for a while since I have been using Yahoo since it was still hosted at akebono.stanford.edu.  Right now I sincerely hope that the Yahoo Search employees do well after this whole deal is over and perhaps start a few new companies here.

I started writing this blog a little over  two years ago with .   Since then I have written hundreds of posts here and also on Wise Bread.  This is not the first time I have kept a journalor blog, but this blog is definitely the one that lasted the longest.  So after two years of writing, I think it is a good time to reflect on what this blog has become.

First of all, this is  a great place for me to give my friends and family updates on my life.  After college my friends naturally dispersed all over the world and it is hard to contact everyone to just talk about what is going on because I am busy with work full time.  Since starting this blog , , and  now I am carrying the little nugget below:

I have gotten many messages from my friends and family in the form of “Hey I read on your blog that…”.  Sometimes my friends also start discussions about the random topics I write about, and that’s always fun.

Next, writing down my thoughts from time to time is really therapeutic for me and my husband.  When I am blogging my husband gets a bit of “man time” and he  appreciates that I don’t talk his ears off about what I think all the time.  It’s not that we don’t talk to each other, but I know he is not that interested in a lot of the money and finance topics I write here.  Also, he is pretty much the first to know things that happen in my life so there is no point in telling him again.    This has been a great place for my rants and raves, and it will probably continue to function as such.

Additionally, blogging has turned into a good source of side income.  We are still donating most of the money my blogs generate so technically my writing is benefiting  people in my community and the far reaches of the world in a tangible way.  I don’t really do a lot of promotion of my blogs, but now there is a steady stream of advertising revenue.  This aspect of the blog wasn’t totally planned in the beginning, but I am glad that it is happening.

Through this blog I have also met some great folks at , and also .   This also wasn’t really planned, but it is a great result of letting random people read my thoughts.  Over two years my posts have received hundreds of thousands of page views, and I hope I made people think, laugh, and cringe just  a little.

In the last two years I definitely experienced and learned quite a lot of things and blogging has been a good way for me to chronicle my life and thoughts.  Sometimes I read my old posts as a reminder of what happened, and perhaps in the future my kid will be able to read this and learn something, too.

Yesterday the hubby messaged me a link to a very good food deal at Baja Fresh.  Basically Baja Fresh put out a coupon on their Facebook fan page that allowed customers to get a free burrito with the purchase of a beverage.  The drinks are less than $2 and the burritos are usually $6 to $7.  So after work the hubby and I took advantage of the deal.

When we got to Baja Fresh there was actually a line and the servers at the registers had a giant pile of coupons that people have redeemed.  The hubby was kind of excited that the deal was being accepted at the location.  We each used a coupon and spent $1.74 each for a fountain drink and a burrito.  It would have been cheaper if our didn’t go up.   We sat down and ate our burritoes with a bit of glee.

Afterward, we were walking towards the car, and the hubby cheerfully said, “I found the deal!”

I congratulated him and said, “good job!”

Then he  said, “I beat you in finding the deal!”  I am usually the one sending him coupons so he seems very proud in finding this particular coupon.   Apparently he put Slickdeals on his RSS reader after he married me, and yesterday he read it before I did so he did beat me to it.  I thought it was awfully cute how proud he was of his accomplishment.

Even today he was cheerfully saying how he found a deal, so I think he really had fun in being frugal.  I think for folks who like to save money finding these opportunities is not a chore, but a game of sorts.  It does take a little bit of  effort to always look for a coupon or discount before you shop, but it really does not  hurt to look.  The hubby rarely used coupons before we got together, so I am glad to see that he is starting to enjoy it.

I love reading stories about real people, and today I read this story about nine years ago.    He  does live in a cave, and his lifestyle does seem somewhat crazy by the norms of society, but some of the things he believes about money are things I have noticed or thought about before.

he makes a point that money is imaginary, and that the power of money only becomes real if both the creditor and the debtor both believe in it.  The example he uses is that if you give a bushman in the jungle some German marks then it is nothing but colored paper to the bushman.  That money has no meaning to the bushman.  This is definitely true when you think about it.  Why is the United States able to literally summon trillions of dollars out of thin air?  It is because the United States’ creditors have faith in the word of the U.S. government.  Why did California have to cut spending?  It is because creditors no longer believed in California.   Money is only real because people believe in the system and participate in it.  If you bestow an account with a trillion dollars to an extraterrestrial who places no value in it then it is meaningless to that alien.

Another point on Suelo’s site is that in reality goods and services can be exchanged without money.  One example he had was of a German woman named Heidemarie Schwermer who has lived without money for about 12 years.  She does this by bartering within exchange circles and she is the subject of an upcoming documentary appropriately titled  .  This is not a new idea since people have been exchanging goods and services for thousands of years.  Money just became a global system of accounting that made these exchanges less personal.  It is certainly more efficient to swipe a credit card to buy a sack of rice rather than trading a bag of almonds or something else.  However, for those without money it may make more sense to barter.

Finally, another thing that made Suelo swear off money is the recurring theme of “mo’ money, mo’ problems”.  The example he gave was that when he worked with Ecuadorean tribespeople he saw how money made them buy useless things.  The tribespeople also became less healthy as they spent more because they started to buy things like soda, MSG, and refined sugar.   Suelo said that he charted their development and “it looked like money was impoverishing them”.  I have certainly seen how money could impoverish people.  Some people forget the real things in their lives such as family and friends and pursue money relentlessly because they never feel like they have enough.  The fact is that if they never feel like they have enough then it does not matter how much money they earn, because they will never be satisfied.

Anyway, I think that these people demonstrate that it is definitely possible to live without money, but the hard part is to unplug yourself from what is considered normal.  I am definitely not cut out to live in a cave, but I have to admit that I am a little envious of those living abundantly without money.  For now I am very thankful for the lot I have been given, and I will just have to do my best in this world that is controlled by this “imaginary” system.   I have to admit that this whole financial meltdown made me less fearful of losing money, because life can and will go on without it.

My sister in law recently started her own small business in San Diego.  She majored in interior design in college and she is very artistic.  Since she got married last year she has thought about running her own paper crafting business for a while.  After a fairly long period of research and planning she is finally open for business!  She named her business and she is selling crafting supplies, hand crafted cards, and pre-assembled scrapbook pages.   She also made a  pretty neat shadow box  for me and the hubby so I think she could sell those, too.   She is still working on getting her et up but she already made a lot of great progress on her current websites and looks really great.  She also has on her blog and I think her designs are all pretty cute.

Some good articles from her blog about her journey include:

– This describes her checklist for starting her business

– This describes how she got her business license.

I think it is really awesome that she is able to do something she loves to do and her hubby is pretty supportive.  I thought it was pretty courageous of her to quit her fairly uninspiring job in this economy, too.  I am sure that she will learn a lot  more through this process of starting her own business and her success will depend on how much work she puts into it.  The coolest thing about is that it will be her enterprise from the beginning.

Anyway, I hope that she gets lots of clients and buyers in the future and I am looking forward to see her new designs.    Good luck !