07 Jun 09 The War of the Search Engines

Written by: bikram

Once there was AltaVista and then came Google, and everything changed. From the way we perform search on the Internet to the way search engine index pages. It also changed the way marketer used the Internet to market their products. The new wave of search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) showed the marketer the real value of virtual real estate. The rush to acquire the first two slots of the search engine result pages (SERPs) kicked off.

Since Google, many attempts were made to change the course of the Internet search industry the way Google did, but despite the industry analysts, and self-proclaimed web gurus promulgations nothing happened. Google kept growing larger and larger, heavier and heavier. The David itself has now become Goliath.

Many blue-eyed entrepreneurs launched their dream projects to disrupt the flow, and cut Google down to size, but nothing happened. Some time back, couple of employees left Google and launched Cuil, it was one of the most ambitious launch since Google.  The search engine looked good. SERP was interesting, but not the content of SERP. This baby came and gone without disturbing the peace.

People even tried several spin-offs, from verticalization to localization to search result aggregation but nothing worked. Search result aggregators like Scour even started offering reward point to use its services, and that made people try Scour. Even I used Scour for many days. My motivation was not entirely point earning, I was interested in much more. I was interested in participation. Despite, what I wanted and what the search aggregator wanted, I switched back to Google, and like me many did.

The war is heating up again. MSN, the third largest search engine, has launched it new, improved search engine Bing. MSN is betting its future in the industry on this new search engine. Bing looks promising. The search results are similar to that of Google’s. Bing is far better than the Google Squared, the new search engine from Google. With Google Squared, Google is trying to flank the attack led towards its home page, but Google Squared lacks the vitality to scare off the new entrants. Google need a relook at the weapon it is using for flanking.

Google needs not only worry about Bing, which appears as an improved version of Google, but it also needs to be watchful of Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha boasts about its power to churn out hard facts and objective data. The search engine is going to be the new Google for data mining, and other kinds of research. A search for your name may not fetch any result in Wolfram Alpha, but a search for an objective data like GDP of a certain country, Dollar exchange rate, weight of moon, depth of Atlantic Ocean, etc. will fetch you the result you were looking for. It will not waste your time as Google does when searching for similar data.

New entrants like Bing and Wolfram Alpha are going to give Google many sleepless nights. For Google, these are the competition worth fighting with. Wolfram Alpha with its power to provide hard facts and objective data, in my view, is going to take away a sizeable portion of Google’s search traffic. People who use Google for hard fact will shift their focus towards Wolfram Alpha. As far as Bing is concerned, it looks just like Google (a me-too) with a better result. Hence, I will not bet my Dollars on Bing.

Tags: Aggregators, Disturbing The Peace, Dream Projects, Google, Google Engine, Google Search, Google Yahoo, Index Pages, Industry Analysts, Largest Search Engine, Search Engine Index, Search Engine Result, Search Engines Google, Search Google, Search Industry, Serp, Spin Offs, Time Back, Virtual Real Estate, Web Gurus