Stepping out of the high-confidence zone and looking at second order geometric growth normalizing around a mean weighted 13.5% growth, Google will overtake Yahoo! in roughly 14 months.



The extrapolation aside, Google is exhibiting growth beyond that of Yahoo! which is inline with Google's valuation over 2x that of Yahoo!.  UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter also makes observations on Google and Yahoo!'s hiring patterns:

Google is hiring in non-core areas such as mobile services, television, and as ad agency liaisons while Yahoo! is hiring in the areas of  video content acquisitions and Web 2.0 developers.

Additionally Google is more active in international recruitments with 51% (918) of its open positions for non US based positions with Yahoo! following in with 29% (120) of its open positions for international posts.

Yahoo! has been a large player in the international markets which Google is only beginning to enter and so the geographic distribution of hiring is in line with convergant business models. 

For the remaining hires 882 domestic for Google vs. 680 for Yahoo! the presumed divergence into specialization areas is intriguing.  Google leveraging its already dominant AdSense model into other avenues of revenue generation (possibly going non-web or bringing print ad agency's online?) and exploring new avenues of growth in mobile services and television. 

Yahoo! clearly needs to be hiring Web 2.0 developers to help narrow the technology gap between the two competitors;  focusing on infrastructure is a necessary step  Video acquisition is the safe growth path, as the market is already being defined by YouTube, Veoh, and the plethora of other sites abounding.  Traditional media (TWX, DIS, NEWS, VIA, etc.) powerhouses are all looking to enter the internet video space as a neccessary step to grow their own businesses and fend off the digital chopping block.

Yahoo! is taking a more conservative path and Google is as always looking to blaze new trails.  If Google bets right, they could continue growing by leaps and bounds; if they bet wrong they have enough of a lead to maintain.  Yahoo! is taking the conservative road and looking to grow slowly but surely, hoping that Google stumbles enough for them to catch up. 

In the digital frontier though, I am not a staunch supporter of the conservative route as you could find yourself missing the next big thing. 

In any case, Yahoo! really needs to jump on board with AJAX implementation to at least stay in the ballpark.