Is Microsoft’s vision to compete in search and reinvent itself as an advertising company nothing more than an attempt to get back into its familiar position as Top Gun? Should Microsoft, Google and everyone else just give up on search and outsource to Google? That’s what Tim O’Reilly argues in a blog post today, and I don’t think he could be more wrong.
O’Reilly says Microsoft lost its way after accomplishing its long time goal of seeing “a computer on every desk and in every home.” They’re drifting now, he says, and “their only goal seems to be to stay on top of the heap.” Trying to “eat Google’s lunch” in the search wars is a symptom of this problem he argues. Google already claimed the mission to “Organize all the world’s information,” and he says they’ve already won at search, “or close enough to make no difference.” Microsoft, therefore, should move on to something new that it can win at.
So his advice to Microsoft: outsource search to Google, and go tackle a different problem - building out the Internet Operating System.
I’m not going to argue with Tim about whether it’s a good idea or not for Microsoft to put more resources into the web services infrastructure and software world. I think that’s a fine idea. But what I don’t understand is why he thinks Microsoft must abandon their efforts in search to do so. And I also think that what he suggests - an absolute monopoly in search - would be a disaster for the Internet.
Innovation In Search Has Just Begun
I simply cannot believe that just a little over a decade into the commercial Internet, Tim O’Reilly is willing to say that the search war is over. Did he not read his good friend John Battelle’s book, The Search? He’s not the only expert out there who thinks the war is over - Danny Sullivan argued as much on the Gillmor Gang last week. But I simply cannot believe that this is all we can expect in terms of search innovation.
There are so many areas on search that remain to be conquered. Semantic search. Real language/AI search. The deep web. Media search. Today search basically returns web documents. What I want is for search to complete tasks for me. We’re no where near that today.
We are just getting started in search. To think that search has reached its pinnacle today is like saying aircraft were perfected before World War I. And if just one company were to carry on in aircraft innovation at that point, I doubt we’d have jetliners whisking us around the world today.
Innovation does not occur at a rapid pace without competition. If Google or any company were to control search exclusively, we could expect to see little happen in search technology or business models over even the medium and long term.
Sure, the odd startup or two would still come along and try to shake things up. But search is infrastructure intensive - the cost and difficulty of indexing the web and building a business in an established market requires resources that most new startups can’t realistically access. And if the market consolidates further, competing will become that much harder. There’s a reason monopolies get broken up by governments - market forces can’t generally undo them.
Search Monopoly And A Healthy Internet Are Mutually Exclusive
Search is important because it is the starting point for most commercial intentions on the Internet. As I wrote earlier this week, 68% of online purchases begin at a search engine or shopping comparison site. That drives revenue, and a lot of it. About 40%, or $16 billion, of the $40 billion collected in online advertising comes from search. And 80% of that $16 billion comes from commerce related searches.
The online advertising space is still growing rapidly; there are estimates that it will grow to $80 billion by 2010. If Google continues its dominance of search, they may surpass Microsoft in revenues, and certainly in profitability, in the next few years. The fact that Microsoft won’t be able to count on fat desktop software profits forever only makes the problem worse.
Search and Advertising are effectively mirrors of each other. To say that it’s ok for there to be one player in search is saying that it’s ok if there is a monopoly in advertising.
We’ve already seen what happens if there is a dominant player in search - little effort is put into innovation, and the not enough revenue flows to companies that add value to the system. The risk of the entire ecosystem is put at risk.
For example, the CPC (cost per click) model is flawed, but in Google’s favor because it puts fraud risk inefficiently on the advertisers, who have no way of controlling it at the search engine level. CPA (cost per action) models work much better, but Google has done little more than test them. The current system is great for Google and bad for advertisers. But advertisers have nowhere else to go since Google has 60+% of the search market (and perhaps as much as 90% of search revenue), so they have to live with it. Microsoft’s recent Live Search Cashback initiative shows that competition can and will create more efficient systems.
On the publisher side things are even worse. Google doesn’t share enough revenue with content sites that show their ads. The only thing keeping them even close to honest is the fact that Yahoo and Microsoft will occasionally compete for those partners. Take that away, and Google will go back to keeping the majority of advertising revenue generated at those sites (their only competition will be other types of advertising, which generate far less revenue). That is a terrible outcome when you look at it from the perspective of the health of the Internet.
Microsoft can’t ignore the online advertising market, it’s just too big and important. And we need to be behind them in this effort, because if Microsoft and Yahoo lose interest, we’ll be stuck with a monopoly, and the Internet will suffer. Competition drive innovation. Competition drives prices down. To wish this away is irresponsible.
Update: See Tim’s video response from the comments below, and his follow up post here:
Monopoly is commonly misunderstood to be simply a single supplier, a definition which neglects the reasons for there being only one producer in a given area. If we instead see that government is often itself responsible for restricting entry to the market, it is unclear why, when entry to the market is unrestricted, that such a scenario should be described as lacking competition. At present the internet is not heavily regulated (IP aside), and so any online services which are said to be in monopoly are surely due to the fact that those suppliers are simply better that their competitors.
“It is not that the better one wins. It is that the one who wins is the better one.” (Bongsu Suh, Korean Go master)
Amen! You’ve put into words what a lot of google publishers have been thinking about for a while.
I really want this microsoft aquisition of yahoo to happen, if not then the web is doomed for a decade.yes….
Search is definitely not a done deal. When we do user testing, we often see people fail at search or get sub-optimal outcomes to their tasks. Remember, it’s not about finding documents, it’s about getting things done.
So somebody could easily produce a better search engine than the current market leader; once that’s done, the users will follow. Not the next day, but over a year or two.
(When I say “easily”, I don’t mean that it’s an easy job, but that it’s easy to envision and could easily happen. It’s happened twice already, after all, in only 15 years of Web history.)
Giving one company a monopoly on search is certainly bad for the Web, as you outlined: content sites won’t get a fair deal, and advertisers won’t get all they need.
But the worst element is the threat to democracy and human rights. For all practical purposes, the first SERP page *is* the Internet. Those who decide what should *rank* high also decide what Web users should *read*, and thus in the long term what they should *think* and vote.
If there are multiple competing rankings, then this is not so bad. But if there’s only one ranking, then any bias built into that one system will have a very unhealthy effect on the world.
Does anyone really want to believe or except that the current Results Page for every Keywords Search at Google, will still be in place over the next Ten Years. Because if Google still aims to showcase this type of Keywords Indexing as their revolutionary Search Format in Ten Years time, they will become the next Alta Vista.
If Tim O’Reilly, the great Web 2.0 Visionary, wants us all to give up our vision of better Web Searching because Google has won the Search War, then can the last one to leave the net, please turn off their Web Browser.
Tim O’Reilly, the great Web 2.0 Visionary, should plainly see, that what Google is offering today in terms of their Keywords Indexing and Ads Model, is so Web 1.0, ie Passive Point and Click.
What the whole Web Community is waiting to see is a new way of Searching that involves a more Proactive Web 2.0 Interaction.
Perhaps Microsoft will be the one to deliver this type of Search, because if they only want to aim to replicate Google’s Web 1.0 Search Model, then they are doomed to fail.
Every Google competitor today should forget about trying to replicate Google Search Model and focus much more on the Next Stage of Search.
It’s this Next Stage of Search that Tim O’Reilly should be commenting on, as it should involve many elements of his beloved Web 2.0.
Brilliant. Simply put - The best article I’ve read on Techcrunch.
The point is obvious a healthy one regarding the crazy idea of monopolist sections over the Internet activities.
Great pros and cons and a good perspective over the search market situation.
Kudos for Techcrunch
good example of, hmmm, what aging does to people…
(sorry)
The real competition is bigger than search
I agree completely. We can’t *ask* for a Google monopoly.
Personally, I wouldn’t wanna rely on one particular brand too much, especially Google. They have a mine of information, and the more Google services I use, the more I’m letting them into my personal life. God knows how this information gets used.
He certainly do, that’s obvious.
Agreed that there is way more improvements to be made with search. Keyword searching is only the beginning. Eventually we’ll have much more interactive search; I envision it being something similar to scrolling through your photos in an iPhone.
Good post.
In 10 years time, you don’t need to search for good stuff.. good stuff will search for you.. and search providers will become irrelevant.. it’s Google to worry, not Microsoft.
You know I love this conversation if you will on Google being a Monopoly in the search engine space… but when it comes from Microsoft the biggest Monopoly in the computer space, I find the whole thing really funny.
The reason I say that is because, Google is not a Monopoly by choice, Microsoft is… Google just happen to make a great search engine and people love it and use it, and it works really well so by default it just became like a house hold brand -”and when you think search you think Google.”
Microsoft on the other hand, don’t even get me started. The list of shady things Microsoft does to stay on top of the competition and call that being competitive is just ridiculous to the average person. For one just in-case you need an example and there are many
-Microsoft actually locked Aol out of it’s operating system at one time so they couldn’t appear on the desktop, and then they went one step further and made it so that if you still found it somehow on the net and then did still install it, it didn’t work.. Priceless, Aol just won a lawsuit for that - the list goes on and on.
I only bring this up because you want a company like Microsoft, a true monopoly to compete with Google the good guy, in the search space. Why in the world would you think Microsoft needs to really be in that space, as if they didn’t own enough of the world.
I’m all for competition but can we please get anyone else. Anyone. Anyone but Microsoft. Google is like the duck that laid the golden egg in my opinion, and Microsoft is like a duck hunter that wants to shoot Google so it can sell the gold eggs and call it competing in the space.
@Scoble
What are you talking about with Mahalo? Mahalo lives off Google. As soon as they rank them a little lower…they are gone.
Mike
someone will compete with Google effectively in search but it won’t be Microsoft or Yahoo! Those companies have tried and lost. Look at the Comscore or Hitwise numbers. Google is a juggernaut that can’t be beat with a head on assault.
The competition to Google will come, like it always done, from below. And it’s not clear who will provide that competition. Microsoft was dominant with its technology platform for at least 20 years so I suspect Google has a while to go with their dominance.
In the meantime, Tim is right. Everyone should be focusing on value creation in other places than trying to take the ring from Google’s finger.
Fred
M$ is irrelevant no matter what they do.
They lost the consumers trust and that is all it counts.
Never using any of their products again.
google is not just a better search, they are the preferred brand. there was a research project in which the *results* from yahoo and google searches were swapped to pages of the opposite branding. guess what people preferred? the one with google at the top. how do you counter that? a game changer that big requires making search itself obsolete, not making a better search.
I think we have to remember that Search Monopoly on the network effects of search combined with ad revenue has given Google the resources to bring about the beginning of their own WebOS.
Thus the question show do we open up Search competition via ad revenue so that they are also competing within the WebOS area.
I think MS should look at a buy of Yahoo or buy of their parts as an FCC/DOJ challenge to Google and should phrase it in those terms both form a PR standpoint and legal stand point.
That would give the other ad networks enough time to catch their breathe and take a new tact in solving the problem.
Truthfully I do not see Yahoo being swept into such a play as their bets would be too high for such a play.
However, a rival ad network that has equal partners that MS and Yahoo just happen to be involve din that addresses Google via FCC/DOJ concerns..that seems more likely..
Just a meta-comment.
This is without a doubt the best exchange of views I have encountered on TC in the past 6 months I have been closely monitoring the site. An excellent, provocative initial post, on-topic, clearly argued counter proposals: this is the kind of respectful dialog among the commentators that I would love to see the TC community members manage on a daily basis.
Thanks everyone.
for my $0.02 worth.
you guys are completely missing the boat.
search is important.
advertising is obviously important
however, advertising does not have to necessarily be tied to the actual search business. if you strip advertising away from the search function, search dies as no one really wants to pay for search.
and this will/might raise an interesting question. if a biz comes along that strips out 5-10% of the advertising revenue from google, what will happen to google? no doubt the stock price will take a seriously large hit. which will then impact the ability to continue to pour the funds into the massive data centers. which will eventually grind google to a more flat line in terms of growth..
in my opinion, the battle isn’t for “search” per se… you’re not going to outspend/out engineer google in this dept.
the battle is to be able to strip advertising from search, to recreate the experience/results for the business advertiser, and the targeted customer.
do this well, and you’ll get your name in lights!
peace
I’ve added a followup post to continue the conversation: http://radar.oreilly.com/archi.....point.html
To understand the future of search -we need to examine the two models currently at play - one very developed and one just started
The developed model being G - with indexing, Algos, QC etc - in order to produce the most logical and perfected results as could be by a thinking machine.
The competitive model is made popular by services such as del.icious (I bet you didn’t even know this was a search model)
What most do not realize is that social bookmarking while great in itself is the first step in the creation of the first crowd-sourced search engine. Or in my own fantasies the ‘Mentat Search Brain’
Meaning the pool where all the D bookmarks spill is into their severely underused search engine. Instead of computers ranking and sorting millions of links- D uses crowd-sourced and filtered results to fill information on the subjects
As stated above this is severely underused - mainly because users have not been ‘directed’ or inspired to collectively create it. Just look at Wiki, Linux or other open source projects - with the billions of dollars in ‘free’ man-hours being devoted into development.
What would happen if this same beast was unleashed upon search?
Stay Tuned.
@75 - in 3 words, open social search, or in 2, opensocial search, or in 1, OpenSocialSearch, still G-neric.
Very Interesting Discussion.
Tim O’s pointing towards the “bigger picture”, is of course provocative. And he is right. You can sense that Google is putting up walls now; always the sign of defense, pointing to reaching the top/peak of its market. One of the most innovative things G did was the _way_ it came into the market as a public company. It ensured their ascent as well. The market is another social medium; where consensus outside the specific field, creates value. The further the integration of the markets with social media, the shorter the lifespan of each market, creating faster innovation cycles.
Think about how the market drove application development. First an innovative needed product is created. Then the contunual adding of more and more “features” to sustain market share. Eventually the entire app is transformed into a heavy, nearly unusable beast, until another innovation starts a new product which takes makes the older product extinct. It’s a living system.
Innovation and products that “glue people and ideas together” need to be developed with very short life cycles in mind and be innovative in how they integrate with the public markets. They should not follow older development trends.
I think that many of you are confusing innovation in search with innovation in business or UI.
The MS Live Search guy mentioned how great the resolution on their maps are - who cares if it doesn’t make it easier to find something? People have talked about advertising and how Google doesn’t pay affiliates fairly - who cares? That’s not SEARCH!
Mike, you mentioned The Search (a great book), yet neglected to mention an important piece of insight that book could give us into this debate. All of the major search engines - Google, AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, etc. - came about because a smart person came up with a better way to crawl and/or a better way to index. None of them were based around a creative business model. Google made it to the top without a business model for several years.
Plus, none of those major search engines came about because some executive saw a hot market and ordered his (or her) programmers to get to work on trying to write the best search algorithm possible.
Google will be on top as long as their results are better. As long as that’s true, advertisers will get the best ROI from their ads on Google and more consumers will use Google to search for stuff.
Microsoft’s history of innovation has been spotty when it comes to technology but stellar when it comes to finding ways to make money ad gain market share. In that case, I think we can expect their actions to accomplish what you’re superficially talking about here - taking away some of Google’s market share - but they will not necessarily accomplish what we really need, which is just better, smarter search results.
Or do we really need better search results that badly? Perhaps this is one of those uber-geek ivory-tower debates that the general public really could not care less about.
Maybe this is like audiophiles trying to convince consumers that CD’s aren’t good enough. Guess what? Consumers tolerate the poor quality of mp3’s.
Things win when they’re A: ubiquitous and B: good enough. Google is both of those things.
Microsoft is, perhaps, good enough, and they’ve proven themselves to be excellent at attaining ubiquity with inferior products. I think this is a situation we should fear just as much - Microsoft pulls out the big guns and gets a majority of the search market by brute force, and then rests on its laurels just as much as you are accusing Google of doing so now. We lose either way.
Like I said in another post, pub/sub will probably be the Google killer. Search as we know it (indexing of mostly static content) will not improve drastically. Even if semantics/AI actually do work they will not likely provide a big enough improvement to displace Google.
Google, just like every other company, will be disrupted in time. I happen to think that this disruption will come from pub/sub. It’s a niche market that no big player wants to get in but shows great potential for stickiness. After all, who wouldn’t want to know automagically what new videos their friends watched on YouTube, what new music they sampled on meebo and who said what to whom that caused quite the commotion … and oh, by the way, guess who’s dating whom this days, etc, etc, etc
Yes, it starts with plain old gossip, but as they say, “watch this space”.
Once things mature, then content can definitely hitch a ride, eventually displacing RSS even (Most people still don’t know what RSS means)
Once again, Christensen proves correct. And for those who don’t know who Christensen is, do a search for “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. You don’t need an MBA to “get” it, only common sense. Everyone in the tech business should read this book, from the minions to the CEOs.
So, in short, leave the government out of it. The market eventually takes care of itself.
@76: no: not G-neric but to D-neric to (r)evolution.
no: needs a branding < no brand = no sauce
but yes: the secret sauce will tell < no s. sauce = no whopper.
Didn’t see this mentioned here, but Yahoo and MSN have effectively closed off a lot of advertising avenues by not embracing small publishers. Tons of small blogs on every topic under the sun have Google adwords blocks on their sites (mine included sometimes) because it’s so easy and quick to do.
I’ve applied to the Yahoo Publisher Network on more than one occasion, and have yet to be ‘approved’. That is the same sort of thinking and approach that means Yahoo will continue to be behind the times in the search and advertising arenas.
MSN’s adcenter - https://adcenter.microsoft.com/ - they have a way to take your money to advertise on sites, but don’t give you a way (that I can see) to *be* a site that hosts advertising for adCenter’s advertisers.
Both Y and MSN seem to be continuing to miss something very basic in this equation, or maybe multiple things. “Reach” is certainly something they don’t have relative to Google, and with their current policies, they never will.
@78 -
Excellent observation — even the uber VC’s couldn’t help much back then, other than writing the cheque, then referring G to Y! for some $.
The SEOs e SEMs Market wil increasea each more.
Marcelo
@81 -
“I’ve applied to the Yahoo Publisher Network on more than one occasion, and have yet to be ‘approved’.”
You’re certainly not alone… people just gotton stuck in their wait queue… (thus @24).
Google, just like every other company, will be disrupted in time. I happen to think that this disruption will come from pub/sub. It’s a niche market that no big player wants to get in but shows great potential for stickiness. After all, who wouldn’t want to know automagically what new videos their friends watched on YouTube, what new music they sampled on meebo and who said what to whom that caused quite the commotion … and oh, by the way, guess who’s dating whom this days, etc, etc, etc
I agree wholeheartedly with Michael’s contentions that search is just in its infancy (and as a result doesn’t make sense in this huge and high growth market for major player/company to give up now) and also that a monopoly in search would be a horror for innovation. Look at all of the innovation that is occurring in new search startups (Powerset and so many others) to see the truth of that.
That said, I belive that Michael in general (across posts) needs to (only if he agrees) work to be a bit more careful in a couple of respects.
1. Carefulness and attention to detail. In the first paragraph of this post he writes: “Should Microsoft, Google and everyone else just give up on search and outsource to Google?”. The first Google should be Yahoo! I would think, obviously Google isn’t going to give up in deference to another company also named Google (i.e. he just wrote Google instead of Yahoo or whichever other company he was thinking of and didn’t catch it).
All bloggers make mistakes, myself included, and the above one cited is just a small one. But I believe that media is power, and it may help him to slow down just a little (not in effort, only in pace).
The next point, in extension, is that Arrington regularly has so many scoops and insights — he is an incredibly talented individual, but he can be at the same time also, in my opinion, clearly be hot-headed, bullying and/or shoot also from the hip as well (of course he can also be complimentary and quite civil as well). When he shoots from the hip, sometimes it seems like he really knows more in reserve and is just trying to draw out his subject to see how much he or she knows, while at other times it does appear a bit more of bluster (interrupting too).
Many are jealous, I am sure, of Arrington’s hard earned success, and that is not my motivation here, as I do believe that he is of tremendous incredible talent, and supreme work ethic.
It’s just the point that success is, as they say, a marathon and not a sprint. For all the great story breaks that Arrington has, and I don’t know anyone in our industry better, he is wrong (or speculative) too often as well (sometimes he doubles down his bets - such that Microsoft didn’t do any missteps — that story among others still not fully written as just one small example), see for example a few stories Kara Swisher has written etc. on Michael mistakes (also Valleywag etc., although Kara a much better source). Being first has to be balanced with being right, because the media (and new media) in general, and Arrington in specific, are so powerful.
2) His battle with Scoble (across web posts and comments, Arrington’s tamer here) see also, e.g. http://techleaders20.blogspot......gh-at.html as one example of his often aggressive ways is to my mind, petty and mean spirited (and perhaps his own jealousy of sharing the industry spotlight (a la “DEMO Must Die”) with others. Robert is, to my mind, among the most accomplished, hard working, professional, and helpful to others of individuals in our industry space and deserves better (so does Shel Israel - Michael claims that he is neutral - that both Shel and Loren are his friends — but on the whole on this dimension he’s been on attack mode (and platform) for Feldman over Israel (check out the posts yourself), although he did show that he could take a little (kinder) ribbing as well from Feldman in puppet Arrington video on TechCrunch.
I realize that some of this might potentially just (or partially) involve also a theatre element, to draw traffic (Michael is one talk I heard advocated (or detailed) the practice by bloggers of writing inflammatory headlines to draw traffic and that that works). I realize that traffic is money, so the temptation (for anyone) to be either entertaining or sensationalistic can be fairly strong.
Not to overanalyze (my pre-business background is in Psychology - Master’s degree in Clinical Psych and Executive positions), but this to me seems to be, perhaps (we’re getting heavier into theory here), a bit of a “new money” vs. old “money” proposition. By the analogy, money, like fame, wears easier when it’s been around for a longer time. Those not as used to it tend (according to the reasoning, which is not perfect, granted) flashier and a bit more enamored by the money/fame, more prone to bigheadedness, feeling insecure perhaps also. Michael is a genius but his success at this level (via TechCrunch) is still fairly new (and expanding) and perhaps — danger of overanalyzing I realize, but from the above, etc. he is not yet fully comfortable perhaps in his own skin about it (why the need to put down others that are respected and so often be in attack mode if one is truly comfortable with one’s success? — I believe that we see others as threats even moreso (it is a competitive world) when we’re less deeply grounded in our own internal pinnings to success). Despite incredible achievement especially since TechCrunch, Michael has a rather modest background in some aspects of the resume (stronger in others) if you look at it, and perhaps he feels (I don’t know, a guess) that he has a lot to prove.
You’re great Michael, everyone knows you’re great. Just bring it down (if you agree) a decible and people will love you even more. Others don’t need to die (i.e. suffer) for you to win.
Google has an impressive infrastructure, but they just exist from the year 1998, so why don’t expect good competition in the coming years? It’s stupid to assume that search engines stops under Google’s door.
On the other side Yahoo is not bad in search, sometimes better and indexing faster than Google. Microsoft was plain wrong in the past, but we are seeing a change on their tactics, and they have a lot of patience.
Beyond Yahoo and Microsoft a future Google competitor may be here in the coming years, just need to wait and low the anxiety of the news addict crowd. There are a lot of opportunities:
- A keyword exchange market: http://blog.nektra.com/main/20.....ge-market/
- An analytics sharing space for searching partners/customers/suppliers and being a business social network connecting different companies.
“Innovation does not occur at a rapid pace without competition.” — Uh, Bell Labs, IBM Watson Labs, Xerox Parc.
@79, Peter,
Pub/sub is not likely the answer. In order to sub, you still need to find the pub. That’s why search is the key - the very first and indispensable
step to get the information from a source that you didn’t know before.
@80 -
Still D-ing something?.. D is so 2005!
Branding… G doesn’t need no brand.. G is the brand.. re their oss…
Me also need no brand, as me not about making money.. w/ my OSS..
Secret sauce — good point, good reminder, very true, even for G!!
What kind of sauce ru stewing btw? black magic or something??
Great article.
The market as it is today, allows Google to maintain its monopolistic position. The economic explanation would be that we are dealing with natural monopoly. Meaning that entering this market requires high expenditure, which can be justified only by high prices that are possible only in a monopolistic environment. People often mistake thinking that these costs are intended for technological needs, like R&D, web indexing, etc.; however, the reality is that most of the costs are needed for marketing. The real challenge is to change users search habits and to convince them to try a search engine other than Google’s. The irony is that this situation won’t change as long as Google so profitable due to its monopolistic position.
BTW, I was just thinking when I listened to Tim O’Reilly’s video comment above (and good to see Seesmic back on the site), how extensively, and in how structured a way, are big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) monitoring/analyzing not only TechCrunch but TechCrunch comments, and also the conversations of import (not that all conversations aren’t important) throughout the web.
I ask that, because I think this isn’t an area that I see often discussed, but an important one. If I were Steve Ballmer for one, it’d be a real education for me and my employees in search (I would think) to read through the comments and conversation as it evolves across this post and throughout the web. With the discussions of data portability etc. (as another example)and bloggers being passionate about users rights and not being dictated to by these mega companies, the influence of this online and blogosphere ecosystem is, I would think, an important area of study — from both sides of the fence.
Good post Mike. Just the other day I was researching something and counted on the first results page four bad links - two the links were completely gone, one was to a blog (and not even the bookmark but landed me on the top of the blog, and one was one of those spammy link pages. That was infuriating. To save time I ended up back where I do too many times in the interest of time to Wikipedia.
I haven’t seen anything interesting really come through in search from the big players in a long time. I’ve seen forum posts results removed (thank god) and blogging posts seem to be filtered out more, but overall still the same gaming techniques (spammy pages of links that are uber-annoying) and bad links.
Lots of room for growth - I remember an event where even the Google boys were saying search is still infantile. If they dominate, they may get lazy, which hurts all users in the end run.
Here’s a crazy, but serious thought: Microsoft (or Yahoo), if they were actually serious about facing google head on, should open-source their stuff.
Say a hacker in India comes up and say, you know what? Let me try out a new idea in search. He develops the thing, and without having any infrastructure, he deploys it through yahoo (or microsoft, or Apple or someone bold enough and rich enough to crawl the entire web).
Then there’s a new search engine at a web address, people could experiment with it and vote it up or down. The “most valuable” members of the open source community should receive a share of the deal.
Good point @72. Cut off their oxygen. Isn’t that what MS does quite often anyway?
It seemed pretty obvious that O’Reilly wasn’t promoting a monopoly. What isn’t obvious to me is why you are rooting for Microsoft. If Microsoft did/does acquire Yahoo’s market share of search, I picture it eroding quicker than in the incompetent hands of Jerry Yang. Yahoo stumbles all of the time but still has many of the best internet features and content. Ask has actually progressed the traditional understanding of “search engine.” But Microsoft rebrands a rebate site and you are now championing them? I don’t follow.
a) if scoble mentions friendfeed in other blog, comment or twitter i will kill myself. and/or stab my eyes out
b) can someone who actually would be paying cpc versus cpa comment on arringtons slightly cockeyed view on m$ as an ad company. too many commentary posts from people who earn the money than pay it.
c) there will be a paradigm shift in search so bold it will make you eyes bleed; and it wont be some dope smoking drop outs in the valley but some badass scientists in india or china.
Tim Oreilly’ video comment and sponsored video comment
Brilliant post Michael,
Microsoft is not just “schemeing” for a cheap way to take out Google, their research department is quite busy trying to find new ways of improving search.
This google worship has really gotten out of hand, yes google is a great and extremely innovative company, but that does not mean they are the end all be all. Thank you for pointing that out.
Just because companies have tried and failed does not mean search innovation is dead and that search is a solved problem.
Micro searches and segmented nano searches will chip away at Google, and Microsoft may be savvy enough to quickly buy and exploit those start ups.
For example, imagine how valuable it would be to the U.S. government and others to be able to identify, isolate, and countermand terrorist websites and social networks?
And this is only one example of thousands. Imagine how valuable it would be for an oil company if you could identify the carbon or alternative energy markets in various companies? The possibilities are endless, and some kid in his parents house is already working on the answer.
Tim, no. 95 - how can you read the post and say you don’t understand why I am rooting for Microsoft (or anyone) to provide competition in search? How can you read Tim’s post, where he asks the no. 2 (yahoo) and no. 3 (microsoft) players to give up search and partner with no. 1 (google) instead, and not see that he’s asking for monopoly in search? did you read either post?