Yahoo on the other hand has focused on advertising revenues at the expense of the user experience and tries to direct you to its own content while serving you yet more ads. In other words, an old school portal.

I see two opportunities for Yahoo to focus on. First mobile, as mobile is where we are going and secondly privacy, which is an issue users are increasingly concerned about.

If Yahoo gave me a big clear button saying click to anonimize my search logs now, (in other words give people a clear choice whether to anonimize their logs or not) I believe many users would give Yahoo another chance.

1) Ensure Yahoo search is superior than Google search to consumers. Make all changes to get there. Don’t kid yourself — make it real differences that are clearly better in the real world.

2) Unleash the mother of all campaigns to drive the above point home. Be bold. Put up a “Pepsi Challenge” page that allows consumers to easily see the advantage. Take no prisoners.

3) Do everything possible to get nimble again. Eliminate everything that stands in your way of doing so, even if they are profitable. Have an attitude and kick some tail.

In this respect I would be cautious of focusing too heavily on each others’ perceived vulnerabilities. Instead I would look more closely at what your users expect from you (in terms of value) and how to increase that value based on the answers to the previous question.

That’s very simplistic, but I think it bears repeating since large corporate structures are sometimes so given to dramatics, (Think: Ballmer’s outbursts), that they loose focus.

Besides, if *they* are having problems determining an effective way forward, it would be a shot in the dark for me to make recommendations without having access to their key internal metrics and insights.

Brightcove’s strategy is much friendlier to content providers than YouTube’s; it’s more flexible and allows providers to brand their content wherever it goes, rather than dragging people back to YouTube. It also looks way cooler.