In the wake of Google’s Searchology event and Google’s plans to extend its domination of the search market, it raises the question about what a Google-Killer (GK) would look like and what it would need to offer (if, in fact, a GK could exist/emerge).
Here are 10 attributes that GK would need to possess.
1. A GK would, of course, have to feature great or good enough results to meet the needs of most users.
2. A GK would have to offer a user-friendly interface. It would have to be clean, easy to use and intuitive.
3. A GK would provide some sizzle in addition to search results – perhaps related search results found on Twitter or blogs.
4. A GK would be scrappy but humble. It would definitely not position itself as a GK, or come across as arrogant.
5. A GK would have a huge database but it wouldn’t be sold as a front and centre asset. Instead, an extensive database would be seen as table stakes to play in the search market.
6. A GK would mostly grow based on word of mouth and virally.
7. A GK would operated by a small group of super-smart people who could engage with search users while still developing in semi-stealth mode.
8. A GK would provide great customer service, and happily accept suggestions, criticisms and feedback.
9. A GK would be adored by the media and bloggers, who would do a lot of the heavy lifting from a marketing perspective.
10. A GK wouldn’t be a GK but simply a great search engine.
What else would a GK need to establish a solid foothold in the market?
More: Richard MacManus wonders if the new features – Search Options and Rich Snippets – unveiled by Google yesterday are an indication that it may be losing its core focus.
Technorati Tags: google, search engines
Mark,
Isn't the next wave of search really about bringing structure into unstructured data? A GK would add the following items to evalaute and rank any result set:
- credibility of author(s)
- depth of information
- popularity as a measure of mentions
- ease of use
- free vs paid vs ad-based content
- looking at search history across multiple machines/devices based on my profile and providing "similar" content that I have read/ranked/linked/mentioned before
Basically a GK has to read your mind and your fingers across online and offline rather than just giving you "accurate" search results. Accuracy on Google right now in my mind is up to debate — the real difficult problem of measuring real word-of-mouth as opposed to technical word-of-mouth has not been solved.
To summarize, scanning the Internet for technical markers that imply relevance is not enough to create a GK. Some prescience is needed now.
The only Google Killer might be Google itself. How does any company squander such a huge lead? Failure to innovate, and alienating people. Being undercut on price. Those things ate away at Microsoft's dominance, but slowly, and far from killing the company. So given that Google continues to innovate, and their price being right, they can only kill themselves by alienating folks on issues like privacy, unfair competition, arrogance, etc.
This just sounds like a company that does google better then google. IBM was dethroned by Microsoft which was dethroned by Google.
Which one of those is a bigger better version of the previous one? 15 years ago if you described what a Microsoft killer was you would have just described where OSX is today and OSX still has little market share.
Who ever dethrones google I'll bet it goes something like this:
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."
Gandhi knew his shit.