Google is the start page for the Internet
Rich Skrenta posts a nice summary stating even with all of Google's problems they are still going to be extremely hard to knock down.
Winner-Take-All: Google and the Third Age of Computing (Skrentablog)
Competitors who want to dethrone Google need to fight a two-front war. They have to build a killer consumer search service as well as a successful advertising network. Building one of these is difficult, but doing both simultaneously is nearly impossible. Google's dominance in both of these areas gives them an unfair advantage, and allows them to easily parry any attacks.
- Y! MyWeb
Huh?
>Building one of these is difficult, but doing both simultaneously is nearly impossible.
So why not just put 2 companies together who managed to do one of each then?
Without users neither of those is any good. How long before new SEs are paying for loyalty?
Which two companies?
Okay, say you have a couple of billion dollars sloshing around (I know a few who do) and you want to take on the big G. Which two companies do you buy to equal Google? Ask plus IAC? Gigablast plus Adbrite? Quigo plus ...?
No other search engine has market share with users, and the picture is even bleaker with contextual ad networks.
Is the domination duration decreasing ?
IBM's domination lasted 30 years, Microsoft's lasted 15. Should one guess that Google's shall last less than 10 ?
The speed to fill-in the innovation space has been increasing, given the lower cost to start new web projects.
"Building one of these is
"Building one of these is difficult, but doing both simultaneously is nearly impossible."
It's not impossible - it simply takes will to do it. Yahoo! have made some attempt here, but are being half-assed about it. I mean, seriously - YPN for the US only?
Yahoo! has the technology and resources to push on search and advertising - but so far, the company has seemed barely able to cope with day to day operations, let alone progressive strategic decision making.
And MSN are too loaded with other big projects - Vista, Office 2007, Xbox, Zune, etc - to be able to devote serious time to a project they've treated as a novelty.
The competition is there - if it wants to be - but so far, Google is being allowed free-range in the market place.
myspace the new start page
what if all our kids wakeup with myspace as their homepage? *shudder*
> myspace yeah, i dont think
myspace
yeah, i dont think "the start page for the Internet" is necessarily dependent upon search. IMO niche portals will be the next type of start page.
google is only impossible to beat if you insist upon competing with them along their strengths (search and ppc/cpm advertising).
Its not about
complete defetion of Goog
Its about competing, why look at contextual ad networks, many of the graphical networks like ad.com, valueclick.com (and there fastclick network) have huge reach based on graphical ad formats, the existing contextual networks have difficulty on a reach basis but the other networks have that reach and range of publishers in there networks, contextual is not that hard to implement if you teamed up with a SE who had a Q of advertisers
There will be more and more colsolidation which will make it more interesting, its not about which engine "now" has the most
uniques and how they match up if they buy/merge with an adnetwork its how its brought together and implemented if they are looking to challenge the current status quo
You dont have to match Google on results or advertising solutions to be the winner, its about taking a bigger % of revenue that was meant for them on a month to month basis
No one is going to kill Google or MS or Oracle or IBM but there are plenty of opportunities for new growth from merging of existing companies
If not every one will just run IE, Use Google as there preferred SE and run Windows as there OS, but that hasnt been the case, thats why there is lots to play for, for lots of companies
blue sky
Which two companies do you buy to equal Google?
MSN buys Y (but leaves it a separately branded entity so as not to disturb the sleeping sheep) and Vista folds web search & desktop search (including MS Office integral search) into one, pointing to the now subservient Y.
Yes...
bluesky, that's good. It fixes (mostly) MSN's relevance problem, since they can throw out their own search and use Yahoo's. They also get a great ad network to put their muscle behind. Then the market at least has two credbile competitors, which everyone wants.
The Internet itself changing
to feed users all sorts of content types might mean that search engines stay important for information finding but when it comes to great content they are blown out of the water. I find myself starting at sites like digg.com far more often these days than starting at Google. Commercially google has been good at giving good variety but I fear even that is on its way out with big brand weight. As a webmaster I hope the future holds a spread of usage to ensure the net stays fresh and exciting.
I would like to see how many
I would like to see how many people here do not use Google as their default SE. I am guilty and cannot see myself using anything else unless something comes along that has some unique angle. Our stats are closer to 90% Google for refferals. The good news is they can only go to 100% and no further :) I also think about the day when the SERPS are owned by Google being a mega affiliate, scarey thought but it would not surprise me. Shareholders would be happy.
IBM's domination lasted 30 years, Microsoft's lasted 15
Trying going to Staples, Office Depot or Best Buy and buying a laptop without Windows on it.
Microsoft is still the defacto winner in terms of OS market share... this might change over time.. but as it stands now FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS and variations account for small percentage of desktop applications (I know this changes dramatically for servers... but I am talking desktops).