In the infamous case of The Jilted Jam, our hero Sherlock Holmes meets his intellectual match in the person of the beautiful blogger Kaila Colbin, whom Dr. Watson simply referred to as “The woman.” Writing in her blog, Kaila recounts the back story to today’s exciting drama; the story of a nefarious experiment conducted by one Sheena Iyengar:

She once conducted an experiment in which she set up a tasting booth with a variety of exotic gourmet jams at an upscale grocery store. Sometimes the booth had six different jams, and sometimes twenty-four different jams on display. Sheena wanted to see whether the number of jam choices made any difference in the number of jams sold. Conventional economic wisdom, of course, says that the more choices consumers have, the more likely they are to buy, because it is easier for consumers to find the jam that perfectly fits their needs. But Iyengar found the opposite to be true. 30% percent of those who stopped by the six-choice booth ended up buying some jam, while only 3% of those who stopped by the bigger booth bought anything. Why is that? Because buying jam is a snap decision. You say to yourself, instinctively, I want that one. And if you are given too many choices, if you are forced to consider much more than your unconscious is comfortable with, you get paralyzed.

Holmes was fascinated. If this was true of jams and, presumably, jellies, then it might also be true of alternative search engines! “Ridiculous, Holmes,” Dr. Watson scoffed, “that woman, that - that - femme fatale, she has addled your brain.” “No, Watson,” Holmes exclaimed, “this explains it, its the same reason why so many of the jams were jilted by the shoppers.”

Think about it, the alternative search engines are, by our definition and conviction, superior to the bland major search engines. Just like the larger variety of gourmet jams, there is one to suit any need. Just looking for MP3 files; try MP3Realm or SkreemR; software? try Deligio; code? Krugle; hate snippets? Answers.com or factbites is for you. Looking for a job? Use indeed. And so on, 150+ times altogether.

The ever evolving and changing Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list has just one unchanging feature - it always has 100 choices. And in this case, the consumers are consumer of information instead of jam. On the one table they have three flavors, Google, Yahoo! and MSN; Strawberry, Grape, and Raspberry.

On the second table are 100 search engines, each one different, some with the most beautifully shaped jars or artistic labels. Exotic flavors like Boysenberry and Mango. And what do the searchers buy? Grape. Good old Grape Jelly. Why? Because it’s on the table with only three choices; because its a known flavor. Everyone knows what Grape jelly tastes like, but will you like kiwi-plum jam?

The main problem, as the study above illustrates, is too many choices. Given 100 alternative search engines, 98% of searchers choose a well known major search engine instead. If they spend just 5 minutes tasting each one, they will have to remain in the store for eight hours. Who can budget eight hours just to buy one jar of jam? Nobody.

In the jelly case study, 30% of the shoppers bought from the small selection table and only 3% from the large selection one. In the search space, all 150+ “Top” Alternative Search Engines attract roughly 2% of shoppers. Grape and Strawberry, and just three others? A whopping 98%!

“But Holmes,” Watson interjected, “surely this is too great a mystery - even for you!” “Nonsense, my old friend,” Holmes smiled warmly, “its elementary. What the alternatives lack is a UI.” “A User Interface? but Holmes…” Sherlock Holmes held up his hand. “No, my dear Watson, a Unique Interface, a Unifying Interface. A single choice - just one - that is so enticing and yet inexpensive that they will be drawn to it like a woman to a free diamond necklace.” Homes smiled. (He was referring to her, Watson knew; but he said nothing.)

This is how Google got its start. It was one new phenomenon with one cool, clean, white homepage. There were a variety of search engines back then, but Google was better, Google was free; Google attracted attention.

Holmes took a long draw from his meerschaum pipe. “Someday, Watson, someday. There will be a new homepage, and just like that necklace in the jewelry store window, it will sparkle with the light of a hundred facets, but it will be one stone, the Hope diamond of Search, if you will, and no one will be able to take their eyes off of it.” The room got quiet, and the glow from the fireplace flickered and then went out. The Great Detective put on his deerstalker cap and strode off into the night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Alts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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