Myspace was, facebook is, like Yahoo and Google?

The recent news about Myspace's falling web traffic and it looking for new search advertising partner came as no surprise. But that made me think that why some websites and portals do better than others. Why did Google made it so big than Yahoo! actually let me rephrase that, because that may sound like Yahooo didn't do well, while it was "the" search engine of its time. Before going to a macro level of combining searching preferences of 100s of millions of users into one over encompassing, over arching, sweeping and I mean a really grand stroke of generalization, I thought I should just think about me, and why I like Facebook better and why I like Google for searching and yahoo for emailing. And I realized I don't like noise. A portal makes for a noisy search engine. If Yahoo! main page would give me an option to just have a search UI, without the surrounding barrage of information that I may as well put in the recycling bin, I would use Yahoo more often for searching purposes. Same with Myspace, the home page, yes it is configurable, but the default is an organizational nightmare. I am not so fond of Myspace's new title page either, as it appears to be more portal like with tons of "suggestions" for music, video, and yes! Karoke instead of a social networking as the hub from which everything else evolves. This makes the site the center and not the consumer. But I guess they are targeting the musicians, trying artists and a demographic which likes to use Myspace as the portal of choice for showcasing their talents, building a fan base and what's new in popular culture. Although I think that can be done equally well with facebook.
Overtime, I tend to favor a website with a specialized purpose, LinkedIn for professional contacts, Facebook for all contacts and social "tweets", and twitter for following a buzz without any additional responsibility of actually knowing the "bird".
The main question remains, is their a turnaround for Yahoo and Myspace? For Myspace to find the same growth in its user base will be very difficult. It may find new niches or develop the old ones like the artists in residence, but as far as being world's contact book, it has lost to Facebook. The newer generations will find and figure out their own social networking sites just like the music, clothes and fashion, but for this gen X, Y and I think Z it will be Facebook, lets just assume that advertising dollars are heading that way for the foreseeable future.
Yahoo, is more complicated because Google has to maintain a reputation of not forcing consumers will, or strong arming advertiser, something of a sort that Microsoft faced when it killed Netscape. This can always turn searchers back to other search engines. To make an analogy, in the search space we have Walmarts like Google, but that in no way means that Target can't make a decent buck.....
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