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Using Google to find the next Google
The New York Times has an article today about looking for the next Google. The article mainly focuses on a few startups including Powerset, hakia, ChaCha and Snap. The discuss Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia search project as well.
A few interesting notes from the article:
Since the beginning of 2004, venture capitalists have put nearly $350 million into no fewer than 79 start-ups that had something to do with Internet search. Of dozens of search start-ups that were introduced in recent years, none had more than a 1 percent share of the United States search market in November.
They say that Google’s dominance today is different from Microsoft’s in the late 90s when its operating system was a virtual monopoly and nearly impossible to break. In the Internet search industry, “you earn your right to be in business every day, page view after page view, click after click,” said Barney Pell, a founder and the chief executive of Powerset, whose search service is not yet available.
I would like to get some examples of the following statement by Allen Morgan:
"You don’t need to be No. 1 to be worth billions of dollars.”
And this question makes me wonder if the general search really is losing steam?
But at the same time, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have thousands of engineers, including some of the world’s top search specialists, working on improving their search results. And they have spent billions building vast computer networks so they can respond instantly to the endless stream of queries from around the world.
If you look at VC money:
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Powerset = $12.5 million
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hakia = $16 million
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Snap = $16 million
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ChaCha = $6 million
My bet is that a combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will eventually gain back the share from Google overall. And since I see Yahoo! purchasing AOL, that makes my guess more of a potential reality. With Microsoft you have the strong offline (OS, office, etc.) and with Yahoo! you have the strong online (mail, maps, search, etc.). Together, the force will be strong.
And then of course, this week we have Google’s tipping point.
one thing not noted here Allen is if a new Search Engine makes any sort of noise and gains any serious numbers one of the big 3 will just buy them out to get at thier tech.
In this day and age if a new Search Engine does a great job then word will spread more quickly than it ever did for google.
Yep, you are right… if any of these companies starts to appear on Google's GPS, they will get bought quicker than a soup at the soup kitchen in NYC.
Though I am not sure that word will spread quicker than it did for Google. Google was able to get the mainstream and not just tech. That's the key. Geeks and tech nerds can only take something just so far (see Digg).
ah I don’t know because Digg has no real value to the average web user but search engines offer a function.
Firefox is starting to spread fast to the non techie crowd so I think a good search engine will.
I think the one to watch will be the wiki one.
Not sure I buy your non techie firefox deal – do you know of any numbers? I think until FF is pre-installed on pc's, it won't ever reach maximum velocity. But I do agree the numbers are gaining which is great. Plus how much is built from it – take Flock or Songbird.
Wikipedia needs a non-techie design before it moves mainstream. I do agree that Jimmy is getting mainstream media coverage which is critical.
I am not sure where but i have read it somewhere that its getting more widespread. However how many of the very non techie people are using google? I suspect that there are a large amount of users that think yahoo/MSN/AOL are the internet.
My mother Googles. You can't get more mainstream than that because she calls it a machine, has no idea how to do anything but play solitare and check email on aol. Yet, she uses google for her search engine.
Funny thing – on aol in the search box, she types google, goes to google and then searches.
But I see your point – though I think the AOL days of the late '90s are not the same as today. More people using dsl and cable which provide direct connections so they are open to the full web. And my guess is that many use whatever search is installed by their upstream provider by default.
yeah BT is the main ISP here in the UK and they have a deal with Yahoo so I suspect that Yahoo’s UK presence is flattered by this relationship.
But at a guess these ISP will start to do a deals with Google about google powered backends for them.