Search Engine battles revisited
By David Fishman
Search Engines have been around since the mid
1990’s and there has always been some level of competition.
As I wrote a few months ago this sector is heating up and
the competition is getting stiff. The biggest shift in
competition from early years to now is from portal wars to
the much more lucrative search front. The few survivors of
those portal wars woke up to discover that search was hot, a
moneymaker and increasingly dominated by a then upstart
called Google.
At this moment we are experiencing search
titans or search superpowers going to war. Google, Yahoo,
and Microsoft are major players squaring off to control web
search technology and hopefully, secure their own destinies.
Google is currently very close to releasing
financial information that will allow it to go public. This
will change the current search valuation drastically. Google
is a giant missing piece for those who want to calculate the
value of search.
Overture's public filings kicked off Wall
Street's interest in search; Google's public filings will
likely add fuel to the fire. Renewed speculation about who
will "win" the search wars will also follow.
With this background in mind, here's a look
at where things came from and some thoughts on where we are
going.
December 23, 2002 is the day yahoo said it
would stop using free search results from Google and start
using the Inktomi results. The fact was that Yahoo never
used there results and stayed with the Google results.
However, the fact that Yahoo even did this to Google, was a
sign they want to figure out how to get away from Google and
go to war with them.
The Inktomi purchase meant Yahoo would
produce such programming itself, rather than rely on Google.
Yahoo likely did this to control its own technology and be
completely independent in this very lucrative space.
The Yahoo technology development came with a
ton of acquisitions. In October 2003,
Yahoo
bought Overture.
Earlier that
year, Overture itself had purchased the crawler technology
used by AltaVista and AllTheWeb,
which was
meant to create a more even playing field as it competes with Google.
By February 2004, Yahoo has created Yahoo
Search Technology. That month, Yahoo deployed Yahoo Search
on its own site,
finally it
could dump Google
and engage in the first real battle of the
search wars. To date it does not seem like there has been
too much of a loss for Yahoo or gain for Google or the other
way around. Things have stayed pretty much the same since
Yahoo launched their new search technology.
Microsoft
declared
war in the search market in April
2003, saying it planned to develop its own search
technology. More recently, Microsoft execs such as Bill
Gates and Steve Ballmer have said
that Microsoft's failure
to develop its own search technology was one of the biggest
mistakes the company has made.
While Microsoft has declared war, it isn't in
the battle yet.
MSN's new
search engine
isn't expected until the end of this year, at
the earliest.
Some
observers see Microsoft's coming battle as only involving
Google and thus assume there will be a repeat of that other
classic battle, Microsoft versus Netscape.
In reality, the
battle will
be against both Yahoo and Google, which both have a sizable
share of the search market and their own technology.
Finally, unlike with Netscape,
Microsoft isn't getting a head start by licensing technology
to build on.
In addition to fighting against more
competitors, Microsoft also isn't fighting a pure
technological battle. Search is basically a media product.
Microsoft has never proven it can win in the media
space like it can
in the technology space. It is almost
impossible to lock users into a search platform since it
does not need specific software to run properly.
Even with Microsoft’s desktop integration it
has not affected
Google, Yahoo and others so far, so why will it in the
future? The software can’t get any more integrated. And when
the new version of Windows rolls out over a year from now,
perhaps things like Google's new Gmail system will have
redefined how we use our computers, assuming that service
gains acceptability.
None of us
know of course, who will win the
War. There are far too many factors that can't be predicted.
It is doubtful that any single one of these giants will wipe
out the other. It is much more likely we will see some great
competition that will help pricing and each will begin to
gain a niche in the market while the other loses parts of
that market. However in the near future they will all be
here and here to stay.
Adapted from:
David Fishman
dfishman@ileadmedia.com
