Competition in Web Search: From Where
January 13, 2009
EcommerceTimes.com ran “What Search Needs Is Healthy Competition” here. Miguel Salcido takes a swing at a topic that will be lofted to regulators’ like a badminton birdie. The regulators can see it coming and the birdie looks easy to hit. But some of those whacks will miss, others fly out of bounds, some strike the net, and a few may make it to the other side for another volley. Mr. Salcido concedes that Google “continues to … dominate” Web search. Most of the tracking and statistics services understate Google’s actual lead, but that is of academic interest only. With Microsoft Live.com search losing share and Yahoo floundering like a bass in a net tossed to the bottom of the boat, Google faces competition from:
- Ask.com. The service works well for school kids but doesn’t meet my needs
- Quaero.com. The European Google killer
- Vivisimo. A metasearch system?
Maybe the challenge will come from a search engine in China (Baidu) or Russia (Yandex)? What about one of the many start ups who contact me. I like MSE360, but the company has a low profile.
Mr. Salcido suggests that competition for Google “would most likely come from a Yahoo/Microsoft or Yahoo/News Corp. merger.”
I don’t agree. Google represents a construct that will be difficult to duplicate. The “competitors” with some savvy are finding ways to work around Google, in spite of Google, or with Google. Competing with Google–based on my monitoring of Ask, Microsoft, and Yahoo–seems to be difficult. The reasons include:
- Google has been beavering away for a decade. Now an outfit wants to catch up. Good luck. A leap frog over Google is a better bet than trying to amass the resources to duplicate Google.
- Google, like Apple, has evolved into a weird social brand. Google has zero in common with the average Web user, but people love the GOOG. Apple has a similar effect, but so far Apple has not shown much appetite for the Web search business.
- Google continues to innovate. For my Google and publishing report due out this spring I describe one of Google’s monetization innovations. Few know about Google’s potential for generating money from content using a different business model than traditional media companies use. This type of innovation is largely off the radar of most Google pundits.
I think competition would be useful. From my pond filled with coal mine runoff, I don’t see much of threat in the current crop of challengers identified by Mr. Salcido. Yahoo with anything is not going to have a significant impact on Google. Yahoo search does not work for me, although about 20 percent of the Web search traffic reaches Yahoo. The problem is that the lion’s share of the traffic–about 70 percent or so–goes to Google.
Leapfrog, not a compound of two weaker entities.
Stephen Arnold, January 13, 2009
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