Comments on: Can Powerset Unseat Google in Web Search? http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/ The most wonderful search engines you've never seen! Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:31:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: David - Los Angeles Internet Marketing http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50571 David - Los Angeles Internet Marketing Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:24:48 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50571 I think that changing habit is something that brand marketers excel at - being everywhere where the user is, and impressing them enough to use the search engine. It's not the quality of search - yet. You need critical mass before anyone starts saying "xxx search engine is better than yzz search engine". For example, Yahoo and AOL used to have a large start on the market because they were the start pages. However, Google gained alot of traction in the tech world as the best solution (as well as powering Yahoo and AOL's search for a while, which boosted their brand. Yahoo had since played catchup (by buying both a natural search engine and the paid engine - and focused more on human editing (which is their strenfth) rather than just the algorithm itself. In blind testing, they've even won Google! Regardless, once people started going "ga ga google", the perception became that Google is the best, which slowly erodes market share. Yahoo and Microsoft simply can't compete. Additionally, I think that Google has gained a huge amount of traffic through their partnerships. Their first partnerships with AOL and Yahoo brought them to the forefront. However, their continuing relationship with Mozilla and Opera - offering Google as default search engines, and giving the open source foundation money, as well as powering sites search with google mini's, has really made them a household name. So anyone who wants to win the search engine war needs to have both "branding" - people seeing their search around, as well as rabid fans, along with "direct marketing" - allowing people to take that motivation and use it to test the search engine. Here are a couple of companies that have unsuccessfully tried to get into the search door using direct marketing or branding: 1) A9.com - Amazon's search engine. Amazon ran a promotion a while ago that offered anyone who used a9 a certain amount of times per month a discount on amazon products. This obviously didn't go anywhere, as they haven't continued it. 2) Microsoft live - They offered free prizes to people who tried the search in terms of software... that also failed horribly, as far as I know the only people I know who did that were geeks who were trying to game the system! 3) Ask.com - interesting idea, spectacular lack of skill in implementation, and terrible choice of medium. We all know about Ask.com's brandning campaign across the UK. As soon as I saw I thought, these guys either have way too much money to blow, or they absolute morons (or their ad agency... or both). It turns out that they were absolute morons, and the $100 million dollars went to waste, and they are now focusing on the african American niche. You can check out my full rant on <a> what it takes to be a google killer on my blog<a>... I think that changing habit is something that brand marketers excel at - being everywhere where the user is, and impressing them enough to use the search engine.

It’s not the quality of search - yet. You need critical mass before anyone starts saying “xxx search engine is better than yzz search engine”. For example, Yahoo and AOL used to have a large start on the market because they were the start pages.

However, Google gained alot of traction in the tech world as the best solution (as well as powering Yahoo and AOL’s search for a while, which boosted their brand. Yahoo had since played catchup (by buying both a natural search engine and the paid engine - and focused more on human editing (which is their strenfth) rather than just the algorithm itself. In blind testing, they’ve even won Google!

Regardless, once people started going “ga ga google”, the perception became that Google is the best, which slowly erodes market share. Yahoo and Microsoft simply can’t compete.

Additionally, I think that Google has gained a huge amount of traffic through their partnerships. Their first partnerships with AOL and Yahoo brought them to the forefront. However, their continuing relationship with Mozilla and Opera - offering Google as default search engines, and giving the open source foundation money, as well as powering sites search with google mini’s, has really made them a household name.

So anyone who wants to win the search engine war needs to have both “branding” - people seeing their search around, as well as rabid fans, along with “direct marketing” - allowing people to take that motivation and use it to test the search engine.

Here are a couple of companies that have unsuccessfully tried to get into the search door using direct marketing or branding:

1) A9.com - Amazon’s search engine. Amazon ran a promotion a while ago that offered anyone who used a9 a certain amount of times per month a discount on amazon products. This obviously didn’t go anywhere, as they haven’t continued it.

2) Microsoft live - They offered free prizes to people who tried the search in terms of software… that also failed horribly, as far as I know the only people I know who did that were geeks who were trying to game the system!

3) Ask.com - interesting idea, spectacular lack of skill in implementation, and terrible choice of medium. We all know about Ask.com’s brandning campaign across the UK. As soon as I saw I thought, these guys either have way too much money to blow, or they absolute morons (or their ad agency… or both). It turns out that they were absolute morons, and the $100 million dollars went to waste, and they are now focusing on the african American niche.

You can check out my full rant on what it takes to be a google killer on my blog…

]]> By: Mark Cramer http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50462 Mark Cramer Wed, 16 Apr 2008 05:24:54 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50462 Another interesting data point - Cuill apparently just raised $25m, bringing their total fundraising to at least $33m. According to TechCrunch, "Not a whole lot is known about Cuill except that it apparently can index the web at 1/10th the cost of Google." Perhaps they've cleared the "building an index" problem. Another interesting data point - Cuill apparently just raised $25m, bringing their total fundraising to at least $33m. According to TechCrunch, “Not a whole lot is known about Cuill except that it apparently can index the web at 1/10th the cost of Google.” Perhaps they’ve cleared the “building an index” problem.

]]> By: Mark Johnson http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50404 Mark Johnson Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:13:07 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50404 Your analogy to the gasoline infrastructure is interesting, but makes too strong a statement about how search engines shape the Internet landscape. Certain aspects of pages (link structure, titles, etc.) are now optimized for search algorithms, but almost every page still contain a lot of unstructured text. By unlocking the meaning behind the text, Powerset hopes to enhance both the search and explore experiences of users. I was playing around with an analogy of search engines being like roads and technologies like semantic search as improvements to the cars, but that doesn't seem to capture the breakthrough features that we're enabling with our semantic index. I'm excited to see what your view will be after we launch! -Mark Johnson, Powerset Product Manager Your analogy to the gasoline infrastructure is interesting, but makes too strong a statement about how search engines shape the Internet landscape. Certain aspects of pages (link structure, titles, etc.) are now optimized for search algorithms, but almost every page still contain a lot of unstructured text. By unlocking the meaning behind the text, Powerset hopes to enhance both the search and explore experiences of users.

I was playing around with an analogy of search engines being like roads and technologies like semantic search as improvements to the cars, but that doesn’t seem to capture the breakthrough features that we’re enabling with our semantic index.

I’m excited to see what your view will be after we launch!

-Mark Johnson, Powerset Product Manager

]]> By: jamie http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50356 jamie Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:28:47 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50356 Diesel - marginal technology? Since when? Diesel accounts for approx half of cars in Europe? Diesel - marginal technology? Since when? Diesel accounts for approx half of cars in Europe?

]]> By: Mark Cramer http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50353 Mark Cramer Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:58:02 +0000 http://altsearchengines.com/2008/04/15/can-powerset-unseat-google-in-web-search/#comment-50353 I would suggest a 4th challenge - a massive index of as much of the information on the internet as possible. Building an maintaining such an index has become prohibitively capital intensive, making it almost impossible for small entrants, even if they have tens of millions in funding. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Powerset decided to start with just Wikipedia. By the way, I've seen a few startups who are looking to solve this problem by distributing the index. MyLiveSearch is one that comes to mind, although I think there are others. Avoiding the cost of building an index by spreading it across millions of client machines is an interesting approach, but I don't think anyone's come close yet. I would suggest a 4th challenge - a massive index of as much of the information on the internet as possible. Building an maintaining such an index has become prohibitively capital intensive, making it almost impossible for small entrants, even if they have tens of millions in funding. This is perhaps one of the reasons why Powerset decided to start with just Wikipedia.

By the way, I’ve seen a few startups who are looking to solve this problem by distributing the index. MyLiveSearch is one that comes to mind, although I think there are others. Avoiding the cost of building an index by spreading it across millions of client machines is an interesting approach, but I don’t think anyone’s come close yet.

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