Beyond Google

This NYT article about the “Race to Trump Google” made me think about the number of startups in the Silicon Valley who are struggling or hoping to grab a slice of Internet search market. It is obvious that Google is the Goliath and others are tiny Davids trying to out-seat Google from its top spot.This is not an easy job considering the fact that currently Google handles more than half of US Internet search traffic. Also, remember that Yahoo and Microsoft have been trying for a long time now. To topple Google, the competitors should be better than Google in the following areas:

1. Better Search Technology.

2. Better presentation of search information

3. Stronger and more powerful business model.

So I digged even more and found out about the following search engines which you may or may not be aware of.

Better Search Technology:

To overthrow Google, the contenders are perfecting two strategies a) Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processsing b) More people-specific search, against Google’s original PageRank algorithm.

Hakia claims to have better AI. I searched for “Who+killed+JFk” in both Google and Hakia and the results turned out to be more or less the same. But, Hakia doesn’t allow “Vertical Search” which means unlike Google you can’t search only for “blogs”, “videos”, “news”. So, Hakia still has a long way to go.

Digg and del.icio.us fall in the people -specific search category. The advantage is that you get highly filtered search. The disadvantage is, the searches are ranked on the basis of what most people find popular.

Better UI:
Snap and Microsofts Live Search have made considerable breakthrough in this directions. But, how does showing previews of the search result impacts user experience cannot be determined at the moment. Also, even if this idea takes off, it won’t be long before Google catches up with better way of displaying its search results.

The other criteria to look for is Clustering your results. To demonstrate what I am talking about, enter a search query in Clusty. This will return results clustered under various sections/tags. Infact, I found this feature very useful, since it restricts my attention to fewer search results. If developed and advertised properly, this feature can be a definitive edge over Google’s search results. But then I found SearchMesh, which is apparently Google’s lab graduate. SearchMesh has an interesting switch which displays only the headlines of the search results. It also classifies the search unders various verticals lke blogs, videos, wikipedia etc.

Better Business Model:

I can’t emphasize this point more, anybody who wants to go ahead of Google should not only focus on technology but should also try to develop a better business model. The technology improvements can be imitated by Google, but if you want to win this race, you’ve got to have a striking business model, wherein you link search results to something lucrative, something that adds value to both your company and your users. If you can innovate in this area, you can definitely have an edge over others. This ofcourse, doesn’t undermine the importance of “Better Technology” and “Better Presentation”. If they are the pillars of your company, a better business model will give you the Brand advantage, which Google currently enjoys.

I love Google, they are the best in the business now, but so were Microsoft. To Quote Randy from the NYT article:

“It is hard for me to believe that anybody thinks they can take Google’s business from Google,” said Randy Komisar, a venture capitalist who was once known as Silicon Valley’s “virtual C.E.O.” for his role as a mentor to scores of technology firms. “But to call the game over because Google has been such a success would be to deny history.”

The race to beat Google is definitely on.