One of the biggest questions in all of business is: “is the game over in search?”
Google has - by the most conservative accounts from comScore - 50% of market share.
If you look at more aggressive metrics like HitWise and others, Google’s share is a staggering 75% or so.
Whether you’re looking at searches done on Google.com OR the sites it powers OR via its network of contextual ads, one thing is for sure, no one really can match Google under the current rules of engagement. Yahoo! (a stock I own) has a shot, but who are we kidding. The market shares of each are diverging, not converging. MSFT’s MSN.com/Live.com Search is decent, but who uses that? Ask.com and AOL.com are supposedly vying for #4 and 5, but who cares?
Ask.com is a great way for Barry Diller to be relevant in search, but Ask.com’s odd branding campaign speaks volumes about what it’s doing wrong in search. AOL, frankly, I thought was powered by Google up to recently. Of course, their acquisition of Truveo, a video search engine, is a shining star, but again, so what?
Fortune today talks about a report by HitWise:
The other three contenders, Yahoo(YHOO), with a 21% share, MSN Search (MSFT), which is at 8%,and Ask.com (IACI) which has 4% of the pie all lost share on the year. Microsoft’s 4% decline was the worst of the bunch.
But the the thing that caught our attention was the sheer volume of basement dwellers. It seems in addition to the top four, Hitwise tracks another 47 search engines which, collectively, managed to haul in just 1.86% of US searches.
I’m not even sure if MetaMojo.com is listed in that 1.86%, I doubt it, but the point is if you are an online company and you fully outsource search, you’re in trouble. But by the same token, if you’re an online company whose sole raison d’etre is search and your name is not Google, Yahoo!, and because we’re diplomatic MSFT, IAC or Time Warner, it’s time to reassess what you are doing and why are you doing it (unless MSFT bundled MSN Search into Office/Windows and really made it impossible to change that, but that won’t happen thanks to Google’s DC office).
Don’t get me wrong, search is very much in its infancy. Indeed, search is probably at 10-25% of where it could be and what it could represent. But don’t be a jackass into thinking that Google will allow anyone to trump it.
You don’t see too many people really hurting MSFT’s software business, do you? Did AT&T really go out of business? Nope. Standard Oil might not exist in name but when Exxon merged with Mobil and now makes $10B in profits, ask yourself if Google will let anyone touch its pot of gold.
When Google surpassed Yahoo!, Altavista, Lycos and other “search companies cum portals,” it could do so because there was no money in search.
Consumer habits and behavior did not allow for paid search ads, and the paid search ad model itself was to be determined.
Today, the best search engine needs distribution and unless you get it, you are irrelevant. We’re talking a tree in a forest on another planet, in far-off breathing an air provided by VCs envious of Sequoia and Kleiner’s garganthuan returns off Google.
So there you have it.
Can Wales’ search engine make a dent if it takes off? Sure, if he crams it down the throats of Wikipedia users.
Can Powerset be relevant? Of course, if the founders take decision makers at portals hostage.
Can MetaMojo.com become anything other than a nice little hobby? You better believe it, because unique users, repeat visitors and video streams on the Mojo Supreme network is growing and with it shall grow our in-house search engine. But if all I counted on to grow it was “low switching costs” or some nonsense like that, I’d have to kill myself, or take a bunch of innocent people hostage.
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