How on earth does this relate to the search marketplace? Just because one might desire something does not mean it will happen.

Everyone agrees that it’s good to have some kind of competition against Google’s march towards a checkmate situation in search (on the desktop). The problem is, it’s too late.

#1 - We’ve already explained why Google was a one-in-a-million, perfect storm, lightning-won’t-strike-twice kind of business case.

#2 - We’ve also expressed why search startups - including our own MetaMojo.com, but thinking mainly of others suck as Haika, PoweRset, Mahalo, Eurekster etc. - will have very hard times. Mainly: an economic and user behavior-driven impossibility to gain distribution. And second, their only lifeline to survival is a deal with, you guessed it, Google.

A Better Mousetrap?

In search, the history has been quite simple.

2005 Buzzword: Vertical search;
2006 Buzzword: Social search;
2007 Buzzword: Natural language search;

Yet the result in 2008 remains the same: Google is stronger than ever without really banking on any of those trends.

When we built MetaMojo.com, it was a bet first on the theory of vertical search. Basically, you search for Madrid, you should get the best results from best-of-breed travel sources; you search for prostate cancer, ditto health sources.

The first problem? Distribution

No one would leave Google to search on MetaMojo.com (that was not surprising). So we initially launched a myriad of blogs (which became the BloggerMojo.com network) in order to showcase the search results and convince other bloggers to use it, too.

The second problem? Economics

You cannot possibly expect to survive by being in both the content and search spaces, each one deserves its own focus. Incidentally, another unit of ours in content - the WatchMojo.com video property and mainly, syndication network - took off, reducing our own appetite to have our asses kicked by Google/Yahoo/Ask/MSFT.

Of course then, the idea was then to have other blogs do this, not only have our blogs feature MetaMojo.com.

The problem? Google comes with a built-in monetization engine, too… meaning that no site operator in their right mind would pick us over Google. Our strategy (I won’t get into it all) was to then layer a set of personalization and social media bells and whistles. We didn’t, because then Jimmy Wales’ Wikia began to make noise and despite the challenges it would invariably face, I made the decision to focus 100% on WatchMojo.com and leave search for the major players with VC-backed resources.

Monetization is moot if you don’t have distribution: an audience and thus, search volume. This is why MSFT wanted to buy Yahoo!, because it could hit 30% market share, a threshold at which you can become a meaningful player in the market.

Of course, bear in mind that once you have distribution, it’s very easy for one of those Big Four to simply emulate the one bell or whistle you have. Within months, Google launched Co-op which basically gave no site or person to even consider using MetaMojo.com.

The End Game for Google Competitors Remains the Same

MetaMojo.com was always a toy while WatchMojo.com launched… I still think that we could have built a very solid vertical search product with considerable social media attributes but the problem is, even had MetaMojo.com been able to get off the ground, ultimately, the end-game ain’t pleasant. How do I know? A bit of revisionist history?

Nope. Let’s look at one of those wanna-be search competitors, Eurekster.

Eurekster essentially did what I wanted to do in the distribution sense: getting sites to use it. The problem is, even with a number of sites using it, it’s now in the deadpool. I am not sure how long it will remain in the deadpool… but ultimately, Google has built a perfect 1-2 combination punch that proves lethal in that it has locked up distribution and monetization in search, desktop search, that is.

Indeed, Google is the 21st century version to Microsoft and Standard Oil (and it very well might be more valuable soon). But I don’t see a problem, personally.

Sure, an argument could be made that Google (search product) and AdSense/AdWords need to be spun off to create a healthy and competitive market. I am not sure that argument is fair. But that’s another issue.

A Brave New World: Mobile,Wireless Search

Wireless is the biggest pile of hype before/after social networking (before in terms of chronology, after in terms of rank)… when it comes to advertising-supported business models.

However, wireless presents a brave new world, a new frontier, so to speak, for search. The one area where Google could become an after-thought, frankly, is in wireless search.

As such, when Mahalo raises $16M, or PoweRset gets all of this hype (when others like Cognition seem to be doing more, for longer periods of time), etc., I wonder, why bust a nut over something that is already over… why not put all of those resources in wireless (in fact, Mahalo might be scaling, but it’s scaling in the wrong direction).

Then again, maybe mobile search is also a big pile of hype, too?

I doubt it. I say right now video is the killer app, but the idea to search anything at anytime on a wireless devices and get the info I need is arguably a bigger killer app than video…