Gap Between Google and Competition Widening

eldavojohn writes "Business Week has up an article trying to explain why it is getting harder and harder to 'catch' Google in the search engine game. We've heard of many different kinds of search engines and many different companies entering the market but: '... Google keeps gaining share in the face of newly launched capabilities on other engines. In August, Google sites gained 6.8 percentage points of search share from a year earlier, according to researcher comScore Media Metrix. Meantime, Yahoo lost 1 percentage point, Microsoft's sites lost 3.3 percentage points, and Ask.com lost one-half of a percentage point.' All of this on the heels of recent news that A9 scaled back its features. Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?"

Yep.

[tygerstripes (832644)]

Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?

A google-and-one?

Even better!

[by Anonymous Coward]

The Google-plex!

Re:Even better!

[itwerx (165526)]

Mod parent up!
    A googol [wikipedia.org] (correct spelling of the mathematical term) is a 1 with a hundred zeros, but a googol-plex [wikipedia.org] is a 1 with a googol of zeros behind it! (Read the Wikipedia article on it, lots of cool factoids :).

Re:Even better!

[Reaperducer (871695)]

Back before there was a Google, my nephew got in trouble for bringing up the googol in math class. My father told him about googol. The teacher told him he was making it up and gave him detention. Ah, the perils of the New Jersey public education system.

Re:Yep.

[RancidMilk (872628)]

That doesn't make one "bit" of difference... wait... or does it?

Re:

[TopShelf (92521)]

Only if it's the Evil Bit...

Re:

[$RANDOMLUSER (804576)]

Forty two

Re:Yep.

[Anne_Nonymous (313852)]

Nigel: Well, it's one searchier, isn't it? It's not google. You see, most blokes, you know, will be searching at google. You're on google here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on google on your computer. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty: I don't know.

Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty: Put it up to google plus one.

Nigel: google puls one. Exactly. One louder.

the infinity search engine

[everphilski (877346)]

but the domain name is so long noone ever uses it

Re:Yep.

[stunt_penguin (906223)]

I'm a fan of '3 ???' , as it always seems to lead to profit.

Re:

[Ibag (101144)]

As much as it pains me to say this, Google is not a number. The number that you are thinking of is googol. Yes, Google (and the googleplex) are named after the numbers googol and Googleplex, but they are spelled differently. They are, in fact, different words. Even the Google toolbar spellchecker agrees with me!

Re:

[tygerstripes (832644)]

No, it's divisible by three-and-a-bit.

Um..

[Achra (846023)]

A 1 with 100 zero's behind it is a Googol... As far as I know, a Google is a search engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol [wikipedia.org]
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Google_(company) [uncyclopedia.org]

Odd

[pdbaby (609052)]

It's odd that people should say Google are widening the gap... Google's certainly the best, but lately I've been noticing a lot more search results that lead to pages that don't load, or result in 404s (in fact, a domain I used to run 3 years ago is still in Google's index).

Is google not removing ages from their index to try and seem impressive, or getting lax with recrawling sites? Or am I the only one noticing this?

Re:Odd

[Soul-Burn666 (574119)]

Noticed that too. Many 404s, outdated pages (which are USUALLY in the cache tho) or pages that have not a single reference to the search terms.
Another truly annoying set of results are links to other SEARCH sites indexing some pages which may or not have anything to do with the search terms.

Re:

[5KVGhost (208137)]

Yeah, I know what you mean. For example, I often visit Matt Denton's photography site (mattdentonphoto.com). His pages used to reside on Apple's free hosting service until he moved everything over to a dedicated domain. That was quite a while ago, six months at least, but Google still returns results on the now-404'd homepage.mac.com pages in preference to the identical content on his actual, live site. It doesn't seem like that should happen.

Ganz Scheiß

[DerGeist (956018)]

This is all very ironic nonsense; Google showed us just how easy it really is to catch up with "the big guy." Back when Yahoo and Altavista were king, Google overthrew those powerhouses like it was Superbowl III. The key was Google knew what people wanted, and gave it to them. Now, certainly, it doesn't seem like Google is going to forget that anytime soon, and no, it's also not likely at this point that a little guy could wipe out Google, but who knows?

Look at the way great ideas have grown quickly: YouTube, digg, and so on.

And you can bet that if someone came up with a radically new search algorithm that provided noticeably better search results than Google (which is actually falling a bit behind, which is a dangerous mistake...) you can believe that most people would quickly migrate to their new engine of choice. (Of course, if it had little to no ads, speedy and reliable service, etc...)

Better search options

[iangoldby (552781)]

I find that Google is becoming less and less useful.

The web now has become so large that a simple keyword search just doesn't cut it anymore. Try searching for information about a popular digital camera from someone who isn't trying to sell them. It is next to impossible. (Yes I know about http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/ [givemebackmygoogle.com] - a good try, but not really addressing the fundamental problem.)

The best way that search could get better in my opinion is to introduce some kind of filtering on the type of organisation that produces the pages you are searching for. Google already does a bit of this with Google Scholar [google.com]. But we need something far more general, and more to the point, a facility for excluding results of particular types, e.g. blogs, sites trying to sell something, ...?

I know that some people will complain that it may be a very subjective judgement whether site X is commercial or not. But search results are never going to be perfect anyway. Let's have the improvements where they are available, and worry about the corner cases later.

They appear to be addressing this piecemeal

[fizbin (2046)]

For example, if you search google for the name of any common drug (even if you use the generic chemical name instead of the brand name), you'll get options immediately to narrow your results to a bunch of useful subcategories; for example I just did a search and got this before the rest of the results: (I've inserted brackets to show where the links are, or just do the search yourself)

Refine results for Clonazepam:
[Drug uses] [Interactions] [For patients] [From medical authorities]
[Side effects] [Warnings/recalls] [For health professionals]

Now, if they could extend this kind of categorization to consumer electronic devices, I think that would address your main concern.

Re:Better search options

[kestasjk (933987)]

'digital camera -sale -site:.com'; just keep excluding results until you're left with what you want.

The only way to get accurate, personalized results from a flexible search engine is to learn at least some basic query syntax. I don't want digitalcameras.google.com, laptops.google.com, anythingyoucanthinkof.google.com to walk me through making common searches, because it's more effective, flexible and easier to just add on a few extra clauses yourself.

Re:

[kthejoker (931838)]

The ideal search engine would be just like Google, but have one more aspect: real-time fuzzy sliding algorithms.

These sliders could control all kinds of variables: whether you're shopping or not, whether you want local results or not, are you looking for more academic sites or more personal sites, more historical data or more current data, etc. And they need to work seamlessly and on the fly.

Google used to have something like this in their Labs, but I don't think they do anymore.

In any case, the grandparent

Re:

[m0llusk (789903)]

That sounds like a kind of Silicon Valley syndrome. All of these things you say about cool stuff and the brightest minds have been true of the old Apple that nearly died, of Silicon Graphics which has finally died, of Sun which is floundering, and the list goes on. Data General anyone? WANG? On top of that they are now victims of their own success. Having acheived so much they are now in the position of being essentialy monopolistic thug capitalists. Other search engines and portals and ad services ar

Article Summary

[neonprimetime (528653)]

Expanding Territory - Google is expanding into areas previously dominated by Yahoo!, Microsoft, and eBay.

New Formulas - Ask.com hopes their new smarter algorithm will win over searchers.

Topic Communities - Clusty.com has a new feature that retreives related topics to your query instead of related links.

Social Search - Yahoo! has been working hard at ... ask a question, get an answer sites.

An Issue of Trust - Ask.com and Snap.com work on a more visual interface compared to googles plain ordinary links returned.

Google Still Gaining - Google can easily acquire or replicate any new search method that makes signficant headway.

Inertia

[fabioaquotte (902367)]

Inertia is a powerful thing, people tend to not change services unless the one they are using has serious flaws, or a new one with a "must have" feature shows up.

Unless someone comes up with a revolutionary feature for search engines, Google won't be losing terrain any time soon.

Is it possible to think of a number better ...

[i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379)]

Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?
Yep...... 1

Although it is the loneliest number..

A9

[kisrael (134664)]

Man, A9 must have the most wasted publicity budget. I see them prominently placed on sites like IMDB and Amazon, and assume they're "search this site", but no... it's just generic websearch, sometimes with a little bit of themed advertising content on the side.

The thing is, I don't go to IMdB and Amazon to do generic websearches, so it's kind of a waste. I have no idea what "value add" they're trying to bring to the table.

Plus, their name kind of sucks.

Being a HUGE Fan of Google...

[eno2001 (527078)]

...I have to say this is great news but not wholly unexpected. If you provide a very useful service for free, then you deserve to be at the top of the heap. There's no competing with free unless you're, oh how should we put this... BETTER.

They won't stay in front for long

[Rik Sweeney (471717)]

As soon as my new search engine, Centillion, opens, Google won't see me for dust.

Nobody will be able to beat me, nobody!!!!!!

(Evil laugh)

Opposite of my experience

[kahei (466208)]

To me, more and more Google is a tiresome chore -- you have to make stuff work with it, but searches are hugely hampered by blogs, aggregators, search engine traps, link farms and so on to the point where:

If I want to find out about some general topic, I use wikipedia.
If I want to find out about a specific thing, I use a site such as riskglossary or MSDN.
If I want detailed facts, I use a bookshop, still as true today as it was before teh n3t started.
If I'm looking for a line from a half-remembered song, I use google.

In other words, google is strong when you want 'something that contains text X' but not strong for 'a page that describes 'X''. And Google's attempts to preserve quality can actually become a nightmare -- that's how Search Engine Optimization got to be a big business.

I like google and I use google, but to me, the days when it was my one-stop shop for absolutely every visit to the web are long gone.

What else could I possible want?

[el_womble (779715)]

Google have won this round of the search engine game. As far as keyword search goes, there is no reason for me to switch. They're free, they're fast, they almost always get the info I'm looking for in the first couple of links. There is simply no incentive to change. Unless google feck up (start to support wars/slavery so it becomes political, add one feature too many, finally stop with the search results and just returns ads)

However, its not sewn up. What I really want is a search engine that actually understands what I'm asking for. Rather than a library index, what I want is a librarian. The company that get that right will be the overal winners... but thats decades away - and I imagine it will come from left field, just like Google did.

I see no significant difference between Google

[Krotos (831263)]

and, say, Clusty.com, except that the latter doesn't collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party.

Google Vs MSFT monopolies?

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

OK let us assume for a second Google is the defacto monopoly in search engine business. MSFT is the defacto monopoly in OS business. Are they same?

I dont think so. Google operates in a field where the switching cost to the user is zero. If GOOG does not deliver, it is extremely easy for the user to switch to a competing search engine. So I dont feel threatened by GOOG. But MSFT monopoly was created by increasing the switching cost to the user. It realized long before its customers, the key to revenue is lock them in. MSFT effectively confused interoperability with IBM-PC compatibility and later Windows compatibility and got bulk of the users locked in. As long as it prices its products, mainly MS Office a tad less than what it would cost the corporations to switch t a competing product they will keep raking money in. And they use the money to make sure that the playing field does not get leveled ever again.

So GOOG can keep its only if it constantly innovates and provides a better service than its competitor. As long as there is competitive pressure on a company, I dont begrudge any billions they rake in. But I strongly resent even pennies made by unfair companies that do not have the burden of competition. Cable monopolies, electicity utilities, MSFT, teacher unions, anyone who found a way to dodge the pressure of competition irks me. Because I am under so much pressure to constantly learn and fight off competitors 20 years younger than me who are gunning for my job.

Google hardly useful overseas.

[Rocketship Underpant (804162)]

Google is, generally, the best search engine for English, and it's normalization is quite good -- i.e. widening the search to include plurals or singulars, recognize words that might need accent marks, and so on.

But frankly, Google and Pagerank suck when it comes to searching in languages like Japanese. I can search for a Japanese company or item and get two pages of completely irrelevant links first. Not spam links, but junk like blog posts. Normalization sucks; Japanese uses a mixed script (phonetic kana plus Chinese characters), and Google does no conversion or normalization when searching. It would be a cinch for anyone to top Google in the huge Japanese market, and I think they're already getting pummelled by Chinese search engine.

Is it a case of "tall poppy syndrome"?

[russ1337 (938915)]

It seems that if you cant catch them, you take shots at them to change peoples view, or you try to change the rules to make it harder for them to succeed. We are seeing this with the threat of a non-neutral Internet where most proponents nearly always use Google as the example.

I think the shots at Google are a little bit of 'tall poppy syndrome' [wikipedia.org] kicking in. The only thing keeping Google from being resented is their 'humility' - that they aren't flaunting their position and their committed to 'not be evil' - like not handing the info to the NSA without a warrant like the 'others' did.

Firefox

[managementboy (223451)]

I bet there is a correlation between the switching rate from IE to Firefox. It having google as prime search engine makes up for a lot of searches.

They missed the boat.

[Jartan (219704)]

In general the main cause is the bigger search engines are still not even trying to copy the big selling points of google.

Their front pages are still a big abortion of pictures and junk. Google is simple "box + logo".

Their results are trying to coppy google but the no.1 thing the google results page sells is TRUST. Most people trust google that all adds are going to be labeled clearly and they will not be inserted into the results!

MSN/Yahoo/etc already missed the boat on this issue. If anyone is going to compete with Google it's going to have to be someone new at this point probably. Unless of course someone thinks up a new must have feature.

Surprising Google hasn't spawned a new rennaisance

[erroneus (253617)]

I think among the tech crowd, it's a given that companies who cut back on R&D are simply shooting themselves in the foot. Google is all about R&D and trying out new ideas. The amoebic growth and success of everything "Google" should be more than just noticed by various companies... it should be mimicked.

Instead, we still see a whole lot of "heads in the sand" and people wondering why their previously successful business models are failing. But then again I can see where people are trying to demonstrate that they learned something from the dot-com failures too... but perhaps they didn't learn what they should have since a great deal of the mentality from the dot-com boom is present in Google's "just try it" ideology.

Google found a good way to make money.

[purpledinoz (573045)]

Google, unlike other search engines, has figured out how to make money without annoying the users. Other search engines kept adding more and more ads and clutter. Google's clean interface, and relatively accurate searches have prevented me, and other people to switch to another engine. But I wish I knew a another good search engine, when my google seach turns up nothing.

If you want to understand why Google is winning...

[Mark Programmer (228585)]

Compare http://www.google.com/ [google.com] to http://www.lycos.com./ [www.lycos.com] Google realized early on that to win in the searching business, all you need to do is search really well. As long as I still have to scroll my browser page to see everything on a search site's front page, that search site is too complicated. Having a simple main page lets users set it to their home page with negligible impact to their browser's startup time; that really matters more than some people think.

AltaVista got the message, but they're still playing catch-up.

Google: You keep using that word.

[xPsi (851544)]

Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. I think you are thinking of Googol [wikipedia.org]...

One hundred zeros...

[-Neko- (67564)]

That would be the other 100 search engines, then?

how much they've won

[SethJohnson (112166)]

In the past six months, I've noticed two computer newb friends of mine doing the same exact thing-- When provided a URL for a website, they don't know they can type it into the browser's URL field. Instead, they use their bookmark for google (it's also set as their home page) and then type the URL into the google search field. In most instances, Google returns a link to the URL they have just typed.

In the most recent instance, it didn't because it was a website I had just created for my friend. He told me on the phone that he couldn't find the website I had sent him the URL for. I knew the domain was propagated in DNS, so this sounded odd to me. Then when I visited him at his house, I saw him typing it into google instead of the browser's URL field and I had to explain that google didn't yet know about the website and that he needed to request it directly.

The other guy opens his browser, which has google set as his home page, then he types "www.hotmail.com" into the search field so he can check his email.

So, yeah, Google has established itself as a fundamental component of the internet for many, many people.

Seth

Re:

[martin-boundary (547041)]

If you think about your example, it's quite revealing for google's own vulnerability. Take Microsoft as an example. Right now they're still being eyed carefully because of the lingering antitrust issues, but once this passes they can aggressively make inroads by simply offering their own search box prominently enough that users think that's the box they have to type in their urls. Similarly, firefox is giving google an unfair advantage by having the search box prominently available, and even though the sear

research progress, core vs niche

[drDugan (219551)]

I went to hear Norvig talk this week at Parc and found his talk interesting, yet uninspiring. Sadly it was marketing.

Like all large organizations, they have limited ability to focus on niche areas, and some of the really important niche areas they are completely ignoring. It really does always come back to limited resources.

Why have they been unable to complete with YouTube, and instead they are in talks for buying them for 1.X Billion?

Why do they have a litany of research projects that have limited to minimal adoption?

Why are they still focused on the big-numbers word game when it's clear that even with 100 Trillion+ word corpuses, they still only achieve 70-90% accuracy for various language tasks? ...

The answer to all of these questions is that they have a (massive) core business, and the focus of the company if to maintain and grow that core business. To really address the above issues and several other, critical ones toward their ultimate goal, they need to be "more different" than how normal, big companies operate. They need to separate out the core and build an internal financial ecology to mirror the outside world. They currently have an internal idea and development ecology - but that is not enough to incent the niche development internally.

Best technology.

[Jerk City Troll (661616)]

It may actually be that anyone has yet to best any technology offerings Google has, hence nobody is able to challenge their dominance. Apart from that, Google is hardly a monopoly. You have a wide selection of search engines and nobody is forcing you to use any of them over the other.

it's the number of sites.

[krell (896769)]

I like Altavista's actual search mechanism better (it is more precise, and makes sure that the returned pages contain the information I look for without having to place Google's annoying required) "inanchor" tag. However, sites like Altavista and others don't have anywhere near as many pages as Google. Also, the UI/interface/look on all of the other sites really sucks compared to Google.

Re:

[NoTheory (580275)]

Being the best at what you do does not constitute a monopoly. Effectively being the only one doing what you do is a monopoly. And since search is a huge field comprised of a number of companies large enough that you can't count them on your digits, i'd have to say, parent hasn't a clue what it's talking about. Comments like parent aren't funny because they're not true and they don't make sense, regardless of the facetious intent. Please, either try harder, or just don't bother posting.

Re:

[WebHostingGuy (825421)]

Yeah but, the more people who are using the Google search engine the more people see the ads on Google. That means more money.

Re:

[ezzzD55J (697465)]

Nonsense. As /. (and blogs etc, usually) link with 'rel="nofollow"', this will do nothing to GP's pagerank.

Re:Time for some anti-trust!

[Concerned Onlooker (473481)]

No, successs and being the best isn't wrong. Using your success and money to oppress others through unethical business practices is. There is a huge difference. Staying on top because you have a great product is one thing. Staying on top because you can quash others unfairly is another.