Google may be the de facto leader in search today, but will its lead last forever? With services like Mahalo and Cuil gaining attention and Microsoft willing to pour continued billions into its quest for online dominance, Google's rivals are legion, and they're hungry, but that doesn't mean the Big G needs to elevate its corporate blood pressure; Google's dominance is assured far into the future.
According to comScore's latest figures, Google commanded 61.5 percent of the US search market, while Yahoo owned 20.9 percent and Microsoft trailed with 9.2 percent. Both Ask.com and AOL follow far behind the big three. And where are the hot startups? Smaller search engines like Mahalo, Powerset, and Quintura didn't even make the list.
Making room
A search engine can be an extremely lucrative endeavor when it's popular. But with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft commanding more than 90 percent of the market, is it even possible anymore for a small company to be anything more than the nichest of niche players?
The answer is "no" and the reason is simple: if a search service is good enough to make significant headway, deep-pocketed Google or Microsoft will acquire it before it even has a chance to hit the mainstream. Case in point: Microsoft acquired Powerset just a few months ago to bolster its search business as it tries to live up to Ballmer's lofty goals for the future of Live Search.
"I would say 'Hey, you know, you're just three years old,'" Ballmer said in response to a question asking him if Live Search needs to get its act together quickly. "And we've got you in there playing basketball with the 12-year-olds, and you know what? You're growing up quick, you're getting better every day, and you've got all the potential in the world. If it takes you until you're six, seven, eight, nine, ten—but you're gonna dunk, and you're gonna dunk every other guy some day.'"
In its quest to dunk the ball in Google's face, Microsoft has poured money into search for years. In addition to acquiring Powerset, the company has repeatedly made improvements to its search function that included a complete overhaul and a quadrupled index size last year, and a more interactive homepage earlier this week.
With Powerset picked up, let's consider other hot startups. Mahalo has enjoyed some success of late, but human-powered search has significant limitations and, as the company points out, it needs to support the 25,000 most popular search terms to become a success. Unfortunately, Mahalo's search function doesn't really allow for tweaking search queries, which puts it at a significant disadvantage when people are looking for specific topics on a given subject. Of course, Mahalo would argue that it's trying to make search results easier and not force users to tweak, but as queries and users become more sophisticated, that's increasingly difficult.
Cuil launched this week to much fanfare due to its claim to be the "biggest search engine on the Web" with an index of 120 billion pages (three times more than Google and ten times more than Microsoft). But after using it for a while, Ars quickly found that it failed to deliver the best and most relevant search results and it seemed to work well only with generic terms.
So if the three most prominent small search engines—Powerset, Mahalo, and Cuil—were either acquired or simply don't have what it takes to supplant Google, can any search service truly compete, or is all that glorious ad revenue destined to wind up finding vegan cuisine, private party planes, and lava lamps at the Googleplex?
Searching for the "Google Killer"
Some believe that since "Google it" has become such a ubiquitous phrase, name recognition alone makes it impossible to kill Google. Mark Cuban contends that the only way to kill Google is to force it to deliver bad results by having major websites "recuse themselves from Google search results."
But what popular website wants to cut off incoming links from Google? Google is synonymous with search in consumers' minds, and pulling your site from Google's index is the one thing most companies are desperate to avoid.
Yahoo and Microsoft search may be destinations, but they simply don't command mainstream attention the way Google does. Sure, Yahoo's search results may be more relevant in some cases and Microsoft's service may be sleeker, but the vast majority of people use Google because its overall usability and relevance make it the best solution.
Smaller companies like Cuil and Mahalo might be trying something new, but in the search field, it comes down to whether or not they can provide an experience that easily eclipses Google's (emphasis on "easy"). Do Mahalo's generic search results make it better than Google's? Does Cuil's huge index even matter if it doesn't provide you with the best search results on any number of generic or sophisticated queries?
Status quo
No, chances are that for the foreseeable future, the search industry will stay much the same: three major companies will vie for control, but one will dominate the others like an NBA player at a YMCA pick-up game.
With Microsoft's attempts at making Live Search just one key component of a broader online strategy that revolves around Live convergence, Microsoft hopes to attract more users to its search engine through its other products (in a reverse of Google's model).
And although it may be trudging through tumultuous times now, Yahoo is still the second most popular search engine in the US. With its BOSS platform, Yahoo is looking to offer small search engines Yahoo search results, much like Clusty uses Google's, and this may produce some interesting innovation.
But these moves alone make it abundantly clear that both Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to capitalize on areas that don't matter nearly as much as they think. Convergence is fine if you can get people to use your products. Allowing other companies to use Yahoo search results seems like an obvious move, considering Google has been doing that for quite some time.
What about the search engine itself? Instead of making it more interactive, Microsoft should focus on making it more relevant. And instead of maintaining the status quo, Yahoo should consider taking a cue from Google: make the search page all about search, remove the eyesores, and keep it simple.
Google didn't become the world's most popular search engine by presenting distraction and complexity; it won by being relevant, clean, and easy. And with huge coffers of cash to acquire or invest in small companies that could make a big impact, Google is in a prime position to hold the top spot for years with nary a worry about competitors.
If Microsoft and Yahoo should learn anything from Google's initial success, it's that getting "rid" of users quickly is more important than keeping them searching. Sure, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it worked for Google.
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