What will Walla, Once Israel’s leading web portal and search engine be able to bring in 2008, probably not much.
Ilan Yoshua hopes differently, in The Marker Week, he lays out his plan for Walla for 2008.
On cant help but think that perhaps Mr. Yoshua not really getting at the source of the problem with Walla, not doubt that he has brought order to a company that was ridden with bureaucracy and indecision, but since Erez Philosoph, Walla’s former founder and creative force left the company, Walla has failed at every added value service it has rolled out.
Mr. Yoshua seems to think that investing in more servers (like the users are missing storage space) will get users to migrate back to walla mail.
Walla is loosing search market share every month, with a failed endeavour at developing at PPC and contextual advertising engine (AdVatange) that bring no real advantage when comparing with AdWords, Mr. Yoshua seems more concerned with pleasing the public and catching up in the race rather then developing something worthwhile. Stating we dont have the engineering resources of search rivals Google and Microsoft, Mr. Yoshua obviously was not aware the gmail and other Google services where written in only several days time by engineers probably no less talented then the once he has one floor below his office.
Its safe to say that unless Walla has some surprises being cooked up (insiders say they will focus on video), Walla will not make second… or third.