Slashdot Mirror
Business Week On Desktop Search Economics
prostoalex writes "Business Week responds to the recent announcement by Yahoo! to join the ever-competitive desktop search field and asks whether any money will be made in giving away free utilities for desktop search. Apparently, beyond the intangible benefit of brand loyalty (which on the Internet probably doesn't amount to a whole lot), the only way to make money off the desktop search engines, as Business Week sees it, is to show related ads, which is bound to bring up some privacy issues."
They've missed the point. Google/Yahoo/whoever produce a good desktop search that you want to install. You install it. Then, when you need the search the web, what's the first place you're going to search with? Well, probably the one that's already running on your desktop. It's there and easy to access. That's how they make the money. You use their search engine and see their ads. No, you're not forced to use them, but most people will because it's what they want or they're lazy.
Seriously it's money that drives a product therefore if there is no cash incentive, the product will fail.
Brand loyalty (in my segment) will default to 'benevolent' google.
Cash isn't king to everyone, but programmers do have to eat (And corporations do have to make a profit else they get hammered off the street).
If the only reason companies like Yahoo!, Google, MS, etc. are entering the desktop search arena is in order to generate ad revenue, you can be sure I will never install one.
Ads related to my web searches? Ok. Ads based on what files are on my PC? No thanks, too big of a privacy concern for me.......
It's not a question of money, but of presence. Once you have everyone using your software, you can look at sneaking in profit centers.
Google's a great example. They didn't start with AdSense - they added it once they were king.
Once your app is everywhere, you have all sorts of options. For example, if you don't want to sell ads, write another (commercial) program which expands the functionality of the original.
It's not always about the quick buck. Sometimes, it's about putting yourself in the proper position.
How is this even a viable industry, niche market, killer app, or whatever the hell it is that they seem to think it is.
Maybe they need to teach people how to use a computer... because I can't see this catering to anyone but the "I can't find my files even though Windows XP Retard Edition saves it to My\ Documents by default" crowd.
Can't someone just port grep -r to win32, maybe put a fancy GUI around it? Or is it suddenly innovation to reinvent simple tools unix already invented 30 years ago?
Let me update an old saying to accompany this new era: "I'd lose my head if it didn't have this rfid chip implanted in it."
When used in this context, "intangible" doesn't mean "non-existent"... it means "hard to quantify". The difficulty of quantifying the benefit of a proposal should is not per se an argument against enacting the proposal.
For example, almost any investment in infrastructure has "intangible" benefits. When a government considers whether to build new roads to stimulate economic development of an area, it is very hard to pin down precisely what benefits will be derived in terms of commerce, consumption, quality of life, opportunity cost, etc... yet these kinds of decisions are made all the time, and for good reason: a persistent lack of infrastructural investment correlates strongly with diminished outcomes over the long term.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Seems to me more like an effort to keep people using Google for web searches by making sure they turn to Goggle for local searches too, instead of the all-in-one MS tool that is going to be around eventually.
Basically, a pre-emptive strike to keep from loosing customers to Microsoft OS integration.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First of all, grep has been available on windows for a very long time. However, what does grep have to do with any of these search engines?
Will grep find an instance of a word in a pdf document buried in gigabytes of data? What about a plain text document, who will find it faster, grep or GDS?
You do know these things are indexing your docs right?
Maybe you should invent a dumb search engine that gets rid of all that wasteful indexing nonsense does the following:
NoMoreNicksLeft's search engine (v 1.0)
1) Enter text you want to search
2) Enter "top" URL to start search from
3) Crawl whole internet looking for that string for as many links as can be reached from that "top" document.
Version 2.0 would replace steps 2 and 3 with
2) Randomly select a "top" URL, and visit every registered domain on the internet.
Does that make sense to you, because that's what you're suggesting.
- sigs are for wimps.
Ok, show of hands. How many of you running Linux or FreeBSD does NOT have htdig and locate (or FreeBSD variants) already installed? Hmm... Nobody.
Ok, Mac guys. How many, show of hands, don't be shy... How many of you don't use Finder to find things? Nobody. Ok...
Windows guys! Ok, I KNOW you'll be interested. Show of hands, who here doesn't use or know about "find files"? Nobody? Come on, SOMEONE in here must need a new search tool. Anybody? Come on, you're killing me here.
Ok, tough audience. I can roll with that.
Alright, let's pretend for a minute that you DIDN'T have a directory/file search tool installed on your computer. That's DID NOT. OK? Now, show of hands. Who here is willing to install my new tool FindYourCrap, for the low low low price of 29.95, with the understanding that I'll have a few ads running from time to time and you have no expectation of privacy, etc, etc, it's all in the EULA.
What? Nobody? Come ON people! I gave you bagels. Doesn't ANYBODY want some of this?
Fine. FINE! You people are pains in the... Ok, look, I'll tell you what, I've got a line on these condos in Florida...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!