HotTopics: Bulking Up At The GYM: How Publishers And Information Providers Can Work With Google, Yahoo!, And MSN

This HotTopics is designed to help publishers and information providers understand what makes the GYM players (Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN) tick, and to arm them with key knowledge that will help them achieve détente with GYM and maybe even beat these companies at their own game. It provides a side-by-side comparison of the GYM players' key similarities and differences in business and revenue models, missions and cultures, and positioning in the marketplace, and outlines the implications for other industry players. It summarizes the challenges facing GYM, and provides a blueprint for some basic models of cooperation and partnerships that can benefit publishers and information providers. It concludes with specific Essential Actions for those that want to maximize the benefits of dealing with GYM. This is the first in a series of HotTopics that will explore relationships between information providers and GYM, first at an aggregate level and then in more fine-grained analyses of specific market segments.