Mark Evans

More Competition but Google Still Dominates

Somewhat lost within all the buzz about new search engines such as Cuil, SearchMe and PowerSet is that Google’s dominance of the search market continues to grow.

According to HitWise, Google accounted for 70.77% of U.S. searches in July, compared with Yahoo (18.6%), MSN Search (5.4%) and Ask (3.5%). The reality is simple: a lot of people like Google a lot. (How’s that for insight?!)

But a more intriguing question is what’s it going to take for Google to lose market share? Clearly, the big boys of search (Microsoft and Yahoo) continue to have problems mounting a strong charge, which is why there’s so much excitement of new and unproven players such as Cuil and SearchMe.

Is it a matter of having a better user-interface? Do the search results need to be significantly better than Google, or would a worthy rival simply have to match what Google does? Should new search engines focus on verticals rather than trying to go head-to-head with Google.

And, as important, do consumers have an appetite for something other than Google? Judging by the criticism that Cuil endured during its debut, patience is clearly not a virtue within the search engine user community.

Firefox has grabbed 20% of the browser market because the open-source community developed a better mousetrap. As well, users were motivated because the dominant player was Microsoft, so Firefox was an easy way to jump on an alternative to Internet Explorer.

There has been talk about a backlash to Google’s online dominance so that’s the window of opportunity that new search engines need to leverage if they want to thrive.

My sense is there is a Firefox for the search out there but it’s ability to establish a foothold will depend on it having solid technology, search results that meet expectations (no small feat!) and the ability to position it as a new players with aspirations to meet the needs of consumers rather than going after Google - something Cuil failed miserably to do.

Technorati Tags: Google , cuil, searchme

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First Impressions; Tough Critics

For anyone involved in an online startup, the launch of Cuil earlier this week offered some good insight about the ins and outs of officially unveiling a new service.

While lots of media and blog coverage is the ultimate goal to gain attention and users, a far more important issue is making a good first impression with a service that fills a need and performs well.

Cuil got plenty of attention but it was hanmmered for not working and/or offering less than satisfactory search results. So, the question is whether Cuil launched too soon or whether expectations were far too high/unrealistic.

In terms of timing a launch, pulling the trigger can be as much a gut call as a pragmatic assessment that a service is good to go. The reality is no service will be perfect so at some point you just have to jump out from behind the curtain.

Sometimes, the reception is great (e.g. Jango) but it can also be savage (e.g. Flock). In fact, most startups get a rough ride because there’s no lack of critics - most of whom have little idea about what’s involved in building and launching an online startup.

The bias to kick rather than praise can be disheartening given the work and money that goes into a new service. But it can also be a positive in that many services are built in semi-vacuums. Sure, you can get feedback from friends, family and beta users, but it’s not until you launch that the real feedback pours in.

When that happens, the key is to listen, learn, assess, and then determine what it means and how to respond. In some cases, it may mean going back to the drawing board; in others it may be just a matter of tweaking some features and the UI. Whatever the response, smart startups should take criticism as an opportunity to take advantage of free advice from many people who know their stuff.

In terms of Cuil, there are many lessons to be learned, as well as lots of criticism to be assessed. What Cuil needs to do now is carefully weigh everything, and then make any strategic and/or technology changes to get better.

Sure, Cuil was beaten up and bloodied but it wasn’t knocked down and counted out. Like a tough boxer, Cuil needs to go back to its corner, get some good advice, and then come out swinging to fight another day.

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Tags: cuil, search, startup

Everyone Loves a Google-Killer

Cuil may not be cool - or that stable - but it has certainly caught the attention of the blogosphere.

Who knows if Cuil will become a viable and popular alternative to Google but there’s no doubt people are fascinated with a well-financed search player looking to take on Google. If it’s not Cuil getting people hot and bothered, it’s Powerset or Mahalo or Wikia.

When you’re King Kong - especially one making oodles of dough - it’s not surprise that people are fascinating with potential rivals that look interesting. Cuil is no exception but maybe the main difference is Cuil appears to have come up with a different, if not better, search mousetrap by claiming it has indexed 120 billion Web pages.

If anything, that’s attention-grabbing. But there are still a few key questions:

1. Are the results relevant/useful?

2. Will Cuil be better enough than Google to lure people away?

3. Will Cuil be able to turn a seemingly powerful search engine into a business?

The biggest hurdle is #2. To establish a solid foothold, Cuil needs to be better and/or different than Google - otherwise it will just be another search wannabe. While the initial reaction appears to be mixed, perhaps the pragmatic approach is giving Cuil time to prove itself.

That said, the search engine market is ripe for change. People like new and different so there’s an appetite for a new search engine so people have an alternative to Google. It doesn’t mean Google’s dominance is going to evaporate, it just means Google may not be default for the vast majority of search efforts.

If Cuil can achieve enough of a foothold to encourage other search engine start-ups, that will be a huge accomplishment.

For what it’s worth, here’s what Cuil produced for a search for “Mark Evans” (Yes, it’s a vanity search!). Mark Evans, the artist who has consistently been #2 behind me on Google, is the top-ranked results while my old blog (evans.blogware.com) is second and third. No sign of Mark Evans Tech, however.

Technorati Tags: Google

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Where’s the Firefox for Search?

Aside from the kvetching and grumbling yesterday about Mozilla’s servers struggling under the strain, one thing that struck me about yesterday’s Firefox download frenzy (five million and counting) was how Firefox has emerged from an interesting open-source project to 20% of the browser market.

When Firefox started, Internet Explorer had emasculated Netscape - leaving it with 90%+ of the market and little competition. Then, Firefox leapt onto the scene. Slowly but surely, it started to gain more traction and market share. Ass important, it has sparked the creation of new browsers such as Flock.

Firefox has been successful for several reasons: the open-source community continues to push new features; Firefox works as well if not better than IE; and users have embraced Firefox as the valiant underdog. This has given Firefox street cred and a great brand. Google has helped by giving Firefox a business model.

So, here’s the question: why has Firefox been able to do so well in the browser market against the dominant player, while a new and exciting player has yet to emerge in the search engine market to take on Google?

There’s no lack of search start-ups (e.g. Powerset, Mahalo, Jimmy Wales’ Wikia, Quintura) but none of them have truly captured the imagination of users. There’s nothing out there that would make a loyal Google user consider another option.

How come?

Maybe someone hasn’t built another mouse-trap yet. Or perhaps search startups are unwilling to go head-to-head with Google, and have decided to focused on verticals where it can avoid Google. Or maybe Google is invincible.

Any way you slice it, competition is good thing so here’s hoping the Firefox of search happens.

For more, check out Wired’s Epicenter blog, which looked at how long Google will remain dominant. For anyone interested in Firefox 3, you can download it here. As well, Alex Barrera has some interesting thoughts on the future of search that involves the reading of brain neurons.

For some perspective, here’s a chart looking at the traffic for Mahalo, Quintura and Wikia. In May, Google had 135.2 million U.S. visitors.

Technorati Tags: Google

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SearchMe: Search with a Visual Twist

One of the biggest problems with the search market is Google’s dominance. Nothing like having a dominant, aggressive player to deter new ideas and innovation from taking root, which explains why new and exciting search engines seem to be few and far between these days.

The major challenge is coming up with a search tool that is different enough from Google to attract attention. While excellent search results are absolutely necessary, there also needs to be something else to convince people to give something other than Google a try.

It’s a daunting task to take on Google - or, at least, play in the same sandbox - but SearchMe may just have a shot at becoming the new kid on the search block based on a private beta it recently unveiled.

What makes SearchMe different and particularly interesting is it search results are presented as screen shots of Web pages. It’s user-friendly and makes it quick and easy to browse through a number of different Web sites. You can search by using a category - e.g. a search for “hamburger” offers up cooking, restaurants, soccer (?), business news and astronomy (?) - or do a broad search.

Given SearchMe is in private beta, it’s impossible to measure the effectiveness of the search results but as long as they’re solid and useful, the sizzle of graphical presentation will probably be enough to satisfy the needs of most people willing to play with a new search engine. After all, who looks at search results in any search engine beyond the first page?

Based on initial impressions, SearchMe is a search engine that I could easily see as a solid alternative to Google, which is a high praise given the number of search engines that I’ve explored and thought about using - only to quickly abandon.

The other interesting thing about SearchMe is its investors, which include Sequoia, which was one of Google’s early investors. To date, SearchMe has raised $31-million, including $15-million last June. For more on SearchMe, check out BoomTown, which also has a video interview with co-founder Randy Adams.

As for SearchMe’s business model, that’s also impossible to assume but Rich Tehrani suggests an obvious route is being bought by Google or Microsoft.

From a bigger picture perspective, SearchMe is among a growing number of players looking to leverage visual search as opposed to presenting Web users with a wall of text. Another company to keep an eye on is Toronto-based Idee Inc., which is developing a cool image search engine code-named Tin Eye. Other players in the visual search market include Tiltomo, Riya and Quintura. Update: Thomas Hawk has a review on a new service called TagCow that provides photo tagging and recognition features.

For more details on how SearchMe works, check out the video below:

Technorati Tags: Google , Search Engines, SearchMe

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Blog Search in the Spotlight…Finally

As the number of blogs has flourished, a curious development has been the lack of sizzle in the blog search market.

You would figure that blog search would be a hot market given how many blogs are being created and how finding good blog content is becoming increasingly difficult. Yet, the market continues to stumble along with the same cast of characters (Technorati, Google, Sphere, et al) doing their thing. I mean, things are so dull that even acquisition-hungry Google hasn’t made an acquisition.

So, it’s surprising and refreshing to see Blogdigger acquired by SonicMountain, which owns the podcasting network, Odeo. Blogdigger’s Greg Gershman is a classic entrepreneur who has been battling away for five years trying to enhance and expand Blogdigger so congrats to him for his perseverance and ability to attract a buyer.

While this deal is unlikely to shake up the blog search market, it will hopefully give it some much-needed attention. I still believe there’s a lot of potential for someone to capture the imagination of blog readers and bloggers with a search engine that simply performs well. For all of Google’s search prowess, its blog search engine is nothing to write home about, Technorati has definitely lost any mojo it once had despite a management change, while the other players lack sizzle and

For entrepreneurs exploring the idea of starting a blog search engine, the challenge will be convincing investors that it’s an opportunity with lots of potential. That said, there seems to money available for blog networks (or, at least, there are blog networks looking for money) so perhaps there will also be an appetite for blog search start-ups as well.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Google , M&A, Blogdigger

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Yahoo’s Canadian Roots

As an increasing number of people start to write epitaphs for Yahoo as a standalone company, you’re starting to see a lot of nostalgic stories on how David Filo and Jerry Yang started the company in 1994 from the bowels of Stanford University.

So what’s the Canadian connection?

Although few people remember it, Waterloo, Ont.-based Open Text was Yahoo’s early search engine partner. Yup, Open Text was originally a search player. Here’s what Open Text CEO Tom Jenkins had to say about the deal when it was announced in 1995:

“As the premiere guide to the online world, Yahoo! is doing exactly what our Web Search Server technology was designed to accomplish - satisfy the needs of consumers and working professionals by enabling them to more easily navigate through the Internet and gather meaningful information. We’ve established a close working relationship to drive the tight integration of Yahoo! with our Web Search Server OEM took kit. Together, we’re giving Internet users an unbeatable combination of directory-based and intelligent full-text searching unavailable anywhere else on the Net.”

As well, Open Text bought a stake in Yahoo in 1995.

So, what happened? Well, Open Text decided enterprise software had more potential than the search engine market (ha!) so it bailed out of the search business, and Yahoo jumped into bed with Altavista. By 1997, Open Text was completely out of the search game.

More: The Wall St. Journal isn’t being nostalgic at all about Yahoo, advising investors to sell their shares now (”take the money and run”).

Technorati Tags: Open Text, Yahoo

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A New del.icio.us Soon

del.icio.us is an extremely useful service but, truth be told, it has been pretty stagnant since being acquired by Yahoo two years ago.

Fortunately, there’s apparently been a lot of activity behind the scenes, and suggestions (TechCrunch) that the new and improved del.icio.us will be released soon.

It will be interesting to see what the new del.icio.us does. My hope is it will take a huge leap forward as opposed to something modest and safe such as putting del.icio.us results within Yahoo search.

There’s no reason, for example, why del.icio.us can’t be a leading search engine. For all the talk about Mahalo, Wikia and the power of people-powered search, del.icio.us already has all the elements to be an effective and powerful search engine.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, Yahoo

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Welcome to the (Wicked) World, Wikia

A year ago, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales proclaimed he was going to take on Google by creating a Wiki-powered search engine.

Well, Wikia (alpha) has launched, and judging by the reaction by bloggers such as Michael Arrington (”a complete letdown”), Allen Stern (”It’s Not Ready Yet”) and Stan Schroeder (”Wiki Search Sucks”), you can only come away thinking this is the worst debut of a new Web service since Flock unveiled an alpha version of its social browser a couple of years ago.

Arrington’s scathing review includes this damning paragraph:

“First of all, it’s barely a search engine at all. It’s based on the open source Nutch software and contains an index of web pages created by Grub (a company Wikia acquired last year). The search results are poor and thin, as would be expected if not for the huge expectations that have been set. Absolutely no one is going to use this to search the web, until (and if) it is greatly improved.”

Welcome to the world, Wikia!

To be fair to Wikia, the blogosphere is being unfair. Bloggers like nothing nothing more to viciously sink their teeth into something with flaws/problems. It’s the nature of the beast - attack weakness while enthusiastically jumping on the bandwagon when something’s good. It is fair? Not really.

Right now, Wikia is far from perfect. I haven’t played with it much but the results are, at best, okay. Still, Wikia needs to start somewhere sometime. To get Wikia as good as it can get with people contributing search results, Wikia needs to launch. Only over time, can anyone determine whether it’s a success or failure - the same way that Mahalo’s fate will be determined, although it’s difficult to get too excited these days over Mahalo’s prospects.

Right now, Wikia’s biggest problems are:

1. Unrealistically high expectations because, after all, this is a Jimmy Wales-sponsored project with tremendous hype. Everyone is expecting greatness, not a still work-in-progress alpha.

2. An appetite for a search engine that can battle Google. Sure, Google has a great search engine but a lot of people would like to see a viable alternative, which explains the interest and financial support for Mahalo, Powerset, Wikia, etc.

The biggest question facing Wikia now is whether it can recover from critical first impressions. You could argue that Flock has never got its mojo back even though Flock 1.0 is a pretty good browser at a time when social networks, blogs, RSS and photo-sharing are so hot.

My advice to anyone disappointed with Wikia’s launch: be patient. If it hasn’t improved in a few months, you can squawk but to dismiss it now would be premature.

Technorati Tags: Google, Jimmy Wales, Wikia

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Opportunity ‘08: Vertical Blog Search

It looks like IceRocket is taking another shot at establishing a foothold in the blog search market amid a new look and feel, according to Data Mining. IceRocket is best known for once having Mark Cuban as an investor but its turn in the spotlight was as short as Cuban’s dalliance in the business. (He sold his stake in 2006 to Think Partnership).

IceRocket’s attempt to revive itself will be a huge challenge given its shot at success has likely come and gone, but the blog search market is still ripe with opportunity because it still doesn’t have a dominant player. Unlike general search, Google is battling for share along with Technorati, Sphere, Bloglines, etc.

Blog search is ripe for a hot, new start-up to capture the imagination of people looking for a search engine that works well. For all the investment in me-too companies in the photo-sharing and social networking markets, it’s been puzzling not see more activity in the blog search business.

Maybe entrepreneurs and investors believe it’s not worth pursuing because Google has moved into the neighborhood but if you’ve used Google Blog Search, it doesn’t take long to discover that, for whatever, reason, it’s far from terrific.

Still, if you don’t want to go head-to-head with Google, another golden opportunity waiting for someone to step up is vertical blog search. With more than 110 million blogs (and thousands more created a day), a blog search engine focused on a specific vertical (travel, technology, sports, business, music, etc.) could have enormous potential by offering an effective way to meet the needs of people looking information in a market clogged with lots of flotsam and jetsam.

For anyone who may scoff at the idea of a vertical blog search engine, look at how the vertical search market has thrived in recent years as players focus on markets where Google can’t or won’t target. Kayak.com, for example, is steadily building its travel search business through organic growth and the recent acquisition of Sidestep.

So, is this the year that vertical blog search jumps into the spotlight?

Update: Rich Skrenta, who co-founded Topix and the Open Directory Project, has launched a new search start-up called Blekko (doesn’t exactly roll off your tougue, does it!). Why a search start-up. His explanation: “Simple - the idea that the current state-of-the-art in search is what we’ll all be using, essentially unchanged, in 5 or 10 years, is absurd to me”

Technorati Tags: Blogs, IceRocket, Search Engines

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