Former Sensis CEO Andrew Day — a terrific and very smart guy — saw Google as the enemy. He believed that if you didn’t get any branding in Google (for your site) you were just promoting Google with your content. (He would probably take a different view of Yahoo’s Search Monkey initiative that does allow branding in search results.)
Day left Sensis in 2004 to take the helm of World Directories in Europe. But he charted a course that had Sensis directly competing with Google in Australia with its own search portal: Sensis.com.au — “The Search Engine for Australians.” It incorporated a range of data sources, owned by Sensis, to offer better local results than general search:
According to the Sydney Morning Herald Sensis is giving up its competitive effort and now will cooperate/collaborate with Google:
From the first quarter of next year, all of Yellow’s business listings – the most comprehensive directory in Australia – will be stored in Google Maps. As well, Google’s search engine will power the search feature and text advertising on Sensis.com.au.
The move is being interpreted as an admission by Sensis that its own WhereIs online mapping site and Sensis search engine cannot compete with Google Maps and Google search . . .
Google Australia general manager Karim Temsamani and Akhurst said Google and Sensis would share any revenue generated from the deal but neither would reveal the length of the agreement or specific financial terms.
Nielsen NetRatings figures show Google Maps has 2.5 million users, compared to 1.2 million for WhereIs. Google search is used by 9.3 million Australians, compared to just 184,000 users for Sensis Search.
Thus Sensis becomes like other yellow pages publishers around the globe, who’ve had to acknowledge the reality of Google’s traffic to their online success.
Screenwerk 
November 5, 2008 at 5:13 am
Greg
You’re right re Google’s traffic. This deal means we can make our Yellowcontent available to more people in more places. For advertisers, this means more reach and potentially more buyers for no extra cost.
But even without this agreement, we’re at record traffic for Yellow and growing at 20% YOY.
As for search, Google are the best in the game and now we’ll be able to provide world-class search at href=”http://www.sensis.com.au”>sensis.com.au
Steve
November 5, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Still it’s striking to me after having heard Andrew Day early on and his thoughts about such a deal. But the world has clearly changed.
November 7, 2008 at 5:11 am
In Hong Kong,the mosr popular search engine is Yahoo.
Not many people is using Google for search.
Tony Liu
迷你倉
November 7, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Yes Asia is the market where everything is different for Yahoo.