Internet search is reaching an important pivot point, where market leaders are rewarded by Wall Street, laggards are punished, and start-ups try to fill niches left empty by the major players. Though the market has seen a few leaders come and go over the last decade – anyone remember AltaVista? – few would doubt that a distinct top tier has emerged, occupied by Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN.
Can There Be Another Google?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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And there will be another google I’m sure. The Internet is in constant change, and information techniques are constantly getting better. What I think we’ll see is just like the article points out. Niche players being best at different things.
For instance, if you want an economy report about a company, do you use Google? well some do, others use some economy sites library…
Finding a phonenumber? Using yellowpages online.
google is a fantastic company, no doubt, but I would be surprised if many niches won’t get filled by smaller players who will grow.
The Internet is a fantastic place, and fantastic things are bound to happen… but will the web always look the same? I doubt it, the future holds more in its hands and at the next technology shift, new players will come and old will be crushed (AOL will probably be the first to the grave)
I agree, but also disagree. I don’t think there can be another Google in terms of what Google is doing — you simple can’t beat them at their own game. The company itself is constantly changing, it is full of smart people, and they’ve got off-shoot research projects coming out the butt.
They’ll always be on top of new tech.
It’s where Google hasn’t yet sown its seed that there is chance for others to grow.
Maybe, maybe not. Google has it’s income model which you know is based on the ads.
Will this last forever? Maybe, maybe not. Hardware wise, some real breakthroughs in CPU power (Quanttechnichs) and storage (Quanttecnichs) might change this forever.
Assuming this get affordable more can clone Googles type of service and diminish their value I assume?
There will be another google, heck that new google may even be google themselves. They have a long way to go on sorting out the internet and all the info on it. They have barely scratched the surface on letting people use it though.
There is the factor that the internet might change in a big way. What if in 15 years everyone decides to change the entire protocol and structure of the internet? will open up new opportunities for everyone.
Anyways, someone will come along. Google is a search in the end. But thats not a end solution, the end solution is to have thing organized and thus not have to search. So a site more like portals we see today will happen. But they are all very poor currently. If someone applies google like logic to sorting out all the content of the internet into one nice phonebook/encylopidia like thing. They will have something. Google has done this to some extant, but in the end, no one has created a nice fast logical index that finds you everything. Who knows if it’s even possible. But I’m sure someone will get rich in the next 10 years trying to get close.
Furthermore, the first company to beat google will probably be the one that finds a way to filter out 99% of the internet, since about that much is purely worthless, and definitely not what you are looking for when searching. Many search engines have taken different approaches there, I don’t think anyone has nailed it yet. Trying to filter out peoples personal websites, dead sites, and information that is false is not easy.
That or everyone will just degrade further and someone will come out with a perfect Porn search engine and everyone will stop caring about everything else.
Google is not just an internet search company anymore. They are an advertising company. That is where they get the money to dominate the internet search industry. Google has become something like a perpetual motion machine. It feeds itself. More people use it to search, more advertising revenue is generated, Google gets another step above the competition, and repeat…
Can there be another Microsoft?
If the internet has demonstrated anything – it is the capacity for disruptive technologies to undermine existing business models, and create new ones.
If anything has the potential to remove Google from the top, it will take inspirational leadership and resolve. It is not going to be easy – but, when it comes to bringing innovation to a market (which often does not exist), it hardly ever is.
When it was the search engine?
Then they added more, and more, and the whole web-site because a bloated monster with more rubbish than the loacal tip. And no one goes there no-more.
Same bloat is happening with Google.
Nobody goes there no-more?
Yahoo is the most visited site on the internet…
Really? Wonder why is there no “Can there be Another Yahoo?” then?
Wonder why is there no “Can there be Another Yahoo?” then?
Because Google is “cool” with all the nerds and geeks and dweebs. It’s much like GNU/Linux in that regard, except that Google is actually a business (an advertising business, in fact).
Well Google is ‘cool’ with normal people too, well not cool so much as Good. In that it’s the best search engine, and it does what they want. The only people using MSN are those who don’t know how to change their start page.
Yahoo is what makes a lot of DSL carriers work. I have SWBell DSL at $27 a month. My content provider is Yahoo. My daughter is in Verison territory–she has the option of MSN or Yahoo–gues what she chose.
Absolutely not. For starters we can see that Google heads Larry and Sergey know what they are doing both in terms of the direction where they want to take the company and how to manage it as a business. They have the unusual combination of talent in technology as well as in the business arena. Google will and keep remaining one of the most cutting edge information technology companies to be working for. Sure there is the possibility of another company coming out with a better search engine technology than Google and it could be ironically Microsoft even! Google is what Yahoo would have been had it not bloated up. Google seems to be to be very streamlined so far and with billions of cash in the bank to boot. They are supporting open source development for starters that I dont think Yahoo ever did. Bottomline Google is here to stay. It wont bloat out. Look at google maps, google earth, google talk, picasa2 from google, and the new local transport system thingy that they are working on for commuters…its brilliant but basic stuff. I mean pretty soon the world is going to think what the heck did we do when google was not around?
Simply put no , Google is a brand name , verb (googling) , search engines services , ads service , community.
I dont mean that there whont be other similar market company or competitors , but none will have the same market clouth and size that Google currently as.
Just look at Ford , IBM , Microsoft , NASA. Those are titans people rember because they where “The Pionneer”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_services_and_tools
Anyone who say that they can surpass Google in search is a bit like Anakin Skywalker saying he rivals Yoda as a master Jedi.
There will be other Search engine but there will only be one Google.
What about a free community based p2p searching?
Google is an evil company with alot of power over
the destribution of information.
Interesting possibility.
Isn’t this already something which exists? I mean partially anyway. I thought Infospace was something like this or maybe it’s bigfoot that works like this, where you can search for a person (as in individual) who searches a whole bunch of directories which is decentralised (such as yellowpages, ICQ, etc) and gives you info on this specific person and all pages related to him?
Ofcourse I assume you meant more something like Bittorrent or so with P2P searches…. right?
Anyway, what I’m saying is that times change, and smart people do smart things, and never before in time has it been possible for so few to do so much.
So many examples come to mind, like the Google Bros, or Linus Torvalds (which obviously many appreciate), Theo De Raadt (my personal favourite)… Axel D"orfler (not there yet, but what he’s doing now might change the IT world forever) and there’s more people…
Answer: yes, there will be another (hopefully less evil) Microsoft, and it’s called Google.
Totally agree with you plainstyle. An opensource p2p search engine would be way cooler then google.
Again, while “opensource” and “P2P” are great buzzwords, would such a system really be any better than the many engines we already have now? Or would it just turn into something like dmoz/The Open Directory Project?
If Google’s income is mostly based on advertising (and hence its recent growth) then there is the serious danger of a collapse in advertising revenues. It wouldn’t take much of a downturn to hit their hip pocket.
While they were profitable in selling search technology before there are no guarantees about continued growth if the economy takes a dive.
That said, I don’t believe that Google is going anywhere soon. Will it be the MS of the future. One hopes they both take a beating before that happens. I’m not entirely sure that the internet is going anywhere in a hurry either. Lately its stagnated to just be more and more of the same. Perhaps another downturn will shake things up and open up something new.
Google jas just lost 10% of their revenues because AOL changed to MSN.
That tells you how strong their business model is.
Does it seem to anyone else that there are actually two top tiers? Google, and then the rest of the competition. I dont really rate AOL and MSN in the search engine stakes. Is the yahoo engine any good? I know they stopped leasing from google but havent used it in a while. Google really are way ahead of the rest of the game.
Crivens! MSN is terrible, I’ve even looked for MS releated stuff on there, gave up after 2 minutes and found it instantly on Google, I think it was MS Blasterworm patch I was looking for, but my memory could be playing up on that point.
Edited 2005-12-12 12:46
To predict the likelihoods, you have to look for similar cases. In credit cards, the presence of Visa/MC, and their strong branding, made it easy for new card brands to be introduced long after you would have thought the game was up. The entry barriers were greatly lowered by being able to ride on the established underlying card brands.
In directories, the Yellow Pages have resisted competition very successfully – the problem is entry costs, and fees paid for listings, and the interaction between having a lot of listings, and having a lot of users.
The difference with Google is, anyone can get a huge collection of sites, just as good or better, and having got it, visitors will come in droves. There are barriers of scale and brand, but as Google itself showed when overthrowing Lycos and Altavista, these are pretty fragile.
If you reaon like this, the answer would be yes, there can easily be another. But the question is then, why have there not been several?
Is the answer perhaps that the Google business model is not as attractive as the huge market valuation suggests? That if you have the kind of money needed to set one up, the risk reward ratio tells you to buy Treasuries instead? Google’s p/e ratio might lead to such suspicions. Where exactly is the return to shareholders going to come from?
I suspect this is right, and suspect consequently that Google may sell closer to 50 than to 500 in two or three years time. Without there necessarily being any more Googles then than now. Because there may have turned out to be no real money in it. Lots of EBITDA and proforma earnings however….
Few days ago I’ve read an information is press about Hakia search engine, which seems very interesting. Check this out and tell me, what do you think of it:
http://www.hakia.com/
Personally, I’ll watch their progress.
What is the most advanced feature of this search engine is using full phrases. It seems more intuitive, especially for beginers. I do like this idea.
Just buy a wholesale lot of old PCs at eBay, add your favorite Unix/Linux distro suitable for clusters and your homebrew search apps, then you’re good to go.
Lot’s of work tough…