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Honeymoon Over For Google?
scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on some of the challenges Google faces as it gains popularity. For a while, things were looking good: unobtrusive ads, a hardware search appliance, and the fact that 'google' has become a verb (like xerox, kleenex, hoover, etc.). Now, Yahoo! has dropped the 'exclusive' part of its contract, Overture won a series of key contracts, Verity has announced a deal to purchase Inktomi's assets, and Y! announced it was buying Inktomi's web-search business. And other engines such as WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST now mimic Google's 'popularity placement technology.'"
It still does not change the fact:
People love google
Everyone is now using it - as it is small - light - fast - easy - and good
People have irc scripts that use it - Embed it in their webpages
I for one hope that google lasts - I would even pay a small amount if it would help keep them going
1. Google has accurate, intelligent search lists.
2. Google does not pollute those lists with advertisements.
3. Google loads quickly and does not attempt to invasively control your machine with javascript or other methods.
If Google changes any one of these three things to make more money based on their popularity, then their popularity will wane and they will eventually make less money.
Note to Google: Don't kill the golden goose just yet.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
I'm so dependent on Google (professionally & personaly) that it's becoming scary. I don't know what I'd do if disaster struck (they folded, got bought by MS or something similar). As soon as someone comes close to the quality their searches I'll feel better.
- makes searches simple
- allows them to be complex if you like
- doesn't innundate you with spyware crap
As far as I'm concerned, the other search engines can do whatever they want, but until they provide a reasonable duplicate of the functionality provided by my precioussss Google toolbar, I'm not switchin'."I don't think I ain't" -Thompson's Corollary to Descartes
Competition between search engines spawned Google. Google did a better job, so it became more popular. If someone else can do a better job...that's progress. Google has a lead and name recognition. If they are smart and keep making good decisions they can stay ahead. Otherwise they will fall into the shadows as AltaVista did years ago.
There was a time when I couldn't imagine using a search tool other than gopher. Then there was a time when I could type 'altavista' more quickly than any other string of characters.
It is the nature of things.
All sweeping generalizations suck.
Google's "competitors" are not. Yahoo is now a portal for email and stock quotes. Overture makes money by charging businesses for position in the search results. This is a different approach, because Google's search listings are not compromised. Ads are clearly labeled. Google is wildly profitable too, although Overture breaks a little better than even, hence so much attention by the media. Google has little real "competition", rather "imitators".
Plus, on holidays they have cool little themes for their logo.
At it's worse "google vs. anything else" will become like "VHS vs. Beta" or "MP3 vs. OGG". My wife and grandma both know and love google -- and even if a better technology comes along -- I can guarentee you that google will still command there attention. It was at the right place at the right time providing the right service. For whatever reason (dumb luck, quality) many people have planted their roots in using google as THE search engine -- and most of those groups of people don't pull up their roots that easily.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
And which of these alternatives have something like google's cache?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Why should this even make news? Sure, there are sites that will mimic Google because they're good. Google is not the only site out there of it's type. It's the users who will choose which one will work best for them. It's good to see some competition.
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
Any word on an IPO?
That'll be the end of Google if that happens. If it does, buy it if you can get into it early on the first day, sell it in the afternoon and then never touch it again.
Google is governed by the rules of designing the best product for the users, and then profits will take care of itself. If they ever got profit-minded ownership, the distingishing feature of having user-friendly ads only will quickly go away because of the demands of investors who'd rather a short term big surge instead of a slow but long and steady return.
the real power is at
http://groups.google.com/
(the artist formerly known as dejanews)
if they start charging for access...i'm screwed...cause i'll HAVE TO PAY!
it's that good!
I mean seriously. Googles very good. But it still is hard to find what you need sometimes. Often the best information doesn't come up when you search. I've been sent links with information from friends of sites I couldn't find when searching.
You can't expect one company to stay on top of anything. There are always companies that want what googles got and are gunning for them. Altavista was once king, as was voodoo and a host of other companies that have fallen from the top.
I say good. Hopefully all search sites get better. Maybe better ai will help? who knows.. These search engines are important to keep the web usefull.
Wow.. so in other words.. um.. Google is competing with other companies in the search engine arena? Google is fast, has a clean interface, unobtrusive ads, a good signal to noise ratio, the ability to search anything from webpages to news to store catalogs, and a rabidly loyal following. I see no reason why it will be having a hard time anywhere in the near future.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Ive noticed a descrease in spam yet now they are advertising the same scams in google ad words. A shame, but at least I CAN ACTUALLY MAKE THEM PAY THE PRICE!
I would pay, for a reasonable fee, perhaps 10 euros a month for a AD FREE google, because the adwords can get annoying.
Who would actually buy this crap?
The article is interesting, and it goes to show you how clueless you can be and still be authoritatively quoted in a major national publication.
Is this logical? 1) Create fast, relevant search engine, 2) users flock to your service becuase it is fast and relevent, 3) add discrete, marked relevant ads, 4) advertisers flock to it. Some bozo in the story wants to add ste 5: Add bigger ads, disguise them in search results. He sees step 6, advertisers flock to it, but misses step 7, customers abandon it, and step 8, advertisers leave in droves. Hmmm. Can anyone say "Altavista." The reporter writing this article should have called this out, because it is so clearly misguided. Better still is a comparison to Yahoo.
Well, let's see. Yahoo! starts out as a fast and lean service, everyone loves and uses it. They decide they need to add content. Then they decide to accept animated ads, flash-ads and pop-ups/ unders. Who loves it now? I use it less, myself.
If I'm Google, I see Yahoo!'s trajectory very clearly and vow not to fall into the same trap. The whole concept of adding ads becuase there will now be public investors is ludicrous. Everyone uses Google because it is fast, lean and relevant. The people in the article who discuss Google adding morer paid listings do not understand Google's appeal. Once the paid, undistinguished ads start, users will flock away in droves. Personally, I'm convinced that Google Inc. is too smart to let that happen.
Google does 90% of the non-msn queries, and that's pretty close to controlling the flow of information on the Internet, something that certainly scare the hell out of many folks out there.
To see other companies truly trying to compete with Google is really very good, good news.
cuz yeah, once you ignore how damn good, clean and fast google is, and then if you ignore images.google news.google froogle.google and the big kahuna: groups.google ...
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/. only gets excited by the reactionary and the faux-prognostictors. that google has competition isn't news. saying that google is in trouble, and that's newsworthy is insulting to everyone who has a mental capacity (and memory) beyond a fruitfly.
then if we ignore all the featuers built into the googlebar (still shipping for free without bloatware, adware and spyware mind you)
and then if we ignore how tastefully google did the inevitable merge with advertising content. (no pop-ups, no huge flash ads in the middle of the results page : none of that crap)
and then if we forget the reasons that Yahoo, inktomi and teoma botched their first chances (selling rankings, intrusive ads, no other added value, no usenet searches)
yeah - i suppose if we ignore all of this data, we might think that google was in danger.
c'mon - even when they didn't have competition to speak of, in any arena, they were still innovating. but
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Google is innovating its socks off, with google news, image search, Google groups, and all the new stuff coming out of Google labs, like their catalogue shopping engine. I'm all for competition, but you'll have to be pretty amazing to make me give up my googling habit.
(Hey, it is a verb. I just noticed...)
The ranking systems could be their undoing. The larger they get, the more people will distrust them. Pretty soon the conspiracy theories will start about biases, kickbacks, payola, etc.
My point being that so long as people don't know exactly how the pages are being ranked, they'll eventually start believing that they're being forced to wade through other commercial sites and spam to find their subjects.
Then along comes $NEW_SITE to the rescue with a simple, straightforward, easily understandable and demonstrable searching feature.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
And I'd like to add to that: they're clean and simple; an epitome of website design.
They're above all easy to use and the results are good. That's really the most important factor, period.
Plus they're innovative and usefull, especially in their field: google images, google news, google answers; those are things which fit so briliantly within a searchengines core business that it's no wonder google does them so well.
I think google will stick around for a while, especially looking at the direction, usefullness and insightfullness of their R&D.
That said: if they start sucking, they're out. But that's life.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
The feature I find myself using more and more on Google is its ability to search years worth of newsgroup postings. You can find a wealth of information on there which helps me solve 75% of the problems I run into as a network technician. It's actually made me pretty lazy. How is it that Google obtained this database (I remember news on it years back) and is it possible for other search engines to tap into the database? If not, then Google has it made in my opinion...
Google's recent arrival on the dotcom scene proves that the barriers to entry have not increased over time. Disproving yet another strand of looney analyst think. Remember the days when yahoo was worth $gazillions because it would be the 'portal' through which all e-commerce flowed?
Google displaced the other search engines using technology that was hardly unknown at the time. I think the fact altavista and hotbot did not respond indicates they were engaged in Lotus/Visicalc type sleeping on the job. They were in milk the cash cow mode. I suspect google will stay on top at least as long as it remains independent simply because they are like Microsoft, they keep working on the product as if they were number 3 even when they are number 1 by a long way.
The more interesting dynamic is what will happen after Yahoo switches from Google to inktomi which they just bought. I think this forces Google to go after Yahoo on all fronts. Google can copy Yahoo's stock chat site without much difficulty. The hosted web mail will not take much either. They already have dejanews and an interface to the advertisers. Yahoo meanwhile have let their catalog grow really stale, I don't know anyone who uses it these days except as a backup to google.
So question, if you are Ted Turner and the AOL merger of time warner had not gone through. What would you want to buy now, AOL or Google?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Lets give the old google honeymoon a run for it's money then. Can any slashdotter out there provide a search engine that yields (in your opinion) a more accurate result for a given phrase?
Aside from a few specialized search engines, I hav yet to see more accurate results than google, which is arguably why google's honeymoon is not quite over.
I thought it was a noun.
In English, you can verb any word you wish.
Google's recent arrival on the dotcom scene proves that the barriers to entry have not increased over time.
But Google staying there, while later-comers such as AllTheWeb and Teoma are stuck at also-ran status, proves the opposite.
Google was just so good it got over the barriers. It hit at a time when AltaVista was sleeping, and Yahoo was busy creating non-search features. It beat the competition, and was able to get people to change their homepages.
Now, the problem is a newcomer has to A: Be better than Google and B: Be able to distact people from Google. Neither is an easy task.
And don't you forget catalogs.google.com - although it is in the Beta stages, amazing stuff.
Furthermore, 'to google' isn't a verb like 'to hoover' is, unless the people who use the latter aren't telling me something.
'To google' means 'to search the web using Google'. 'To hoover' means 'to vacuum-clean'. You could hoover a room with with a Sanyo vacuum cleaner, but you couldn't google for 'conlang' with Alta-Vista.
Look out!
It's ironic that creating a superior product at a low price (free, in this case) is no longer considered "competitive behaviour". These days, you aren't considered "competitive" unless you are engaging in anti-competitive behaviour (customer lock-in, standards pollution, collusion, etc).
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
All it would take is hiring a stupid CEO who would turn Google into a portal, or some future buzzword equivalent.
Google is cool because their management have understood what the users wanted, and provided it, in spite of whatever was the "common wisom" among managers at the time.
Dude, chill out. Its a computer not a way of life. Think of it as an appliance--like a toaster. Are you going to stand by the toaster you bought, no matter if it won't do the big thick bagels you like?
FUCK those companies for not making thin bagels. I guess Sara Lee doesn't want my money!
Sounds rediculous, but really, don't get religous about a machine.