So, here's the question: is it time to stop bashing Yahoo? Project Panama, the protracted project which long symbolized Yahoo's vain attempt to catch up with Google in search advertising, has finally launched. Word is that its matching text ads to content better than expected. One agency, Avenue A, has told Bloomberg its seeing a 10% lift in the click rate on clients' ads.

A small change, with effects: an increase, it seems, in Yahoo's share of the search advertising market; a recovery in the Sunnyvale giant's depressed stock price; and a pick-me-up for Terry Semel, Yahoo's torpid chief exec, who's now going around telling everybody how happy he is. Should we be happy for him?

It's surely the best news for Yahoo in a while, and we'd love, in principle, to find another big company to prod. But it doesn't change the basics: Yahoo makes less than half what Google produces in revenue for every search query; it needs much more than a one-off 10% lift in clickthroughs if it is to challenge Google's strengthening grip on the search market.

The narrative remains the same. Yahoo wasted time schmoozing in Hollywood while allowing two Stanford students to build a better search engine. Google has eclipsed Yahoo. Terry Semel's failure is not absolute: Yahoo is growing much more strongly than most media companies. But it is relative. Yahoo, not Google, should have owned the internet.