The New Yahoo!, Google, MSN Et Al. Battleground

A reader writes: "Kelkoo sold to Yahoo for 575 million dollars!" That, in and of itself is not that interesting - but combine that with Google's inclusion of Froogle into the front page, and things become more interesting. The comparison shopping field, including places like PriceGrabber (Disclaimer: OSDN is an affiliate of PriceGrabber) in the US, Kelkoo/Yahoo! overseas, Froogle, and MSN is heating up in competition. Now that search has been monetized, the next battleground for big money is in comparison shopping, beyond MySimon and other smaller ones.

Comments

Pricewatch is rotting like the rest of OSDN

[SuperBanana]

Pricewatch used to be cool and useful. Now, all the vendors are using tricks in their ads. For example, search for a popular wireless router, and easily the entire first page is for some crappy no-name router with the text "JUST LIKE (insert model number of the popular router)". Do they get de-listed for doing it? Of course not, because nobody's policing it anymore.

Many vendors I used to use and like have stopped listing with pricewatch for just such reasons. Like the rest of OSDN, there's no active work; they swallowed a bunch of popular resources, and then it's just "let's go on cruise control, and sell as many ads as we can". Notice how on a regular basis we get 500 errors when trying to post? In fact, I'd be willing to bet the only development done on slashdot in the least 2 years has been a)adding subscriptions and b)adding more advertisements.

Search Fears

[The-Dalai-LLama]

Now that search has been monetized, the next battleground for big money is in comparison shopping

I may be a little too cynical, but I use Google about a googillion times a day, and the more references I see about the search engines becoming the next playing field for big-money, the more afraid I become. A handful of paid advertisements on the right side of the screen are fine, but with the evil empire stating that they don't want me to be able to even get on the net without seeing a Microsoft ad and all the big money playaz making major announcements about their intent to dominate the search engine field, all I see are bad things headed our way.

A lot of people are spending a lot of money to break in, and there wouldn't be this much interest without some really good plans for making us pay for all of it.

The Dalai Llama
remember when MTV used to play music videos?

Re:What is the point?

[stratjakt]

People buy things other than computer components online.

Newegg or googlegear are fine for electronics, I use them too and dont bother with pricewatch searches anymore..

But what if you want a baby crib, a waffle iron, a pair of boot cut jeans and alligator boots to go with them, a unicicle, or a chia pet?

Right now I know many regular folks who buy online through Amazon, you can find practically anything. You're really buying from partners (Toys R Us, Office Depot, Etc), but Amazon makes a convenient portal to do so.

That's what these folks all want. For people like my mother to just instinctively go to "msn.com", like she does Amazon now, when she's christmas shopping for the grandkids.

But what's so bad about that?

[Hell O'World]

How'd you like it if you owned Kleenex and then heard everyone call every tissue Kleenex?

I think it would be great! How does it hurt Kleenex? So people go to the store with Kleenex on their list, they are MORE likely to buy the Kleenex brand, not less. How do the other brands benefit? They can't say Joe's Kleenex on the box.

I'm going to Google that... now what was that URL? Hmmm... yahoo.com, right?

Re:What of ODP/DMOZ/Google Directory?

[yppiz]

Permit me a constructive mini-rant here - please read it before moderating it as -5 troll.

ODP/DMoz is dead.

I don't mean that it's a bad idea, I mean that while I found ODP/DMoz to be very, very useful four years ago, I no longer search it for starting points. The links in ODP are stale and rarely of better quality than what I get back from Google.

And now to my rant.

For several years, I've volunteered to participate as a DMoz/ODP editor. I enjoy helping out and volunteering, and I submitted applications in which I had very, very strong domain knowledge (collaborative filtering was one).

I went through a fair amount of work filling out the application form for ODP/DMoz editor status, for a subject that had no editor, and what happened? They rejected me without comment.

Here I am, a domain expert on collaborative filtering, not just with academic credentials, but with two deployed and fairly heavily used systems, and they dropped my application without comment. (And at the time, I had no commercial relationship with either filter, so I doubt it was because of perceived bias).

Same thing happened when I applied to be an editor of another unrelated category.

These were both categories that did not yet have editors, and here I was, a pretty qualified applicant, and getting rejected without comment.

So I gave up. I just didn't get it, and left with the perception that DMoz/ODP was some collection of people who all knew each other, rather than an open volunteer effort. I don't know that this is true, but it's why I didn't vclunteer any more.

Is ODP/DMoz dead? I don't know, but as a user, I find Google better, and as someone who volunteers for community projects (Wikipedia admin, journal reviewer, scientific conference organizer), I think ODP/DMoz seems broken from the community side as well.

Here are my suggestions: ODP should open up the editorial application process. None of this secret anonymous stuff. Further, they should actively seek qualified volunteers. Finally, they should automate as much as possible to increase coverage and accuracy. DMoz is still a great idea, and I believe it can again become the directory of useful knowledge - the place I would turn to when a straight search fails.

--Pat

Re:who cares?

[Schnapple]

I think the real reason that people are so pro-Google is because here is a search engine that works and makes life better. Search engines used to be these sorta-neato things that tried to help us find things but we had to work with and accept poor results. Google changed all of that - think of how many programmers run into an issue and Google Groups save their butter. Google made the web useful.

As a result, we're protective over Google. We don't want to see them become what came of Yahoo. We hope that, since now the dot-com bubble has burst, Google won't fall into the same traps as Yahoo and the failed search engines. That being said, if someone comes along tommorow hands-down better than Google we'll go there.

To the extreme, this is what Apple zealots do. When Apple does what other companies get criticized for, the Apple zealots defend them to the bitter end. Sometimes it's that they don't want to believe that Apple could be an evil company, other times it's that they don't have a predisposed blind rage towards the company (see: Microsoft) and are more able to see that sometimes a business decision is just that - a business decision.

Re:who cares?

[allyourbasebelongtou]

Let's remember, there was a period when AV was king... there was also a period where HotBot (aka Inktomi) was a serious, serious contender. I remember very distinctly for a LONG period if I was looking for good technology stuff, (i.e. shopping or mailing list archives) I searched HotBot first.

I also remember what a great resource NorthernLight was for finding printed materials.

IMHO, in search it ain't over 'til the dust settles, and it never stays settled for long. :-)