PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD No one disputes the power of search on the Web. But search is one of the few online technologies that have experienced little in terms of real innovation. This isn't for a lack of effort or entrants. Numerous search engines have tried to change how we use search, but most, like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' experiment Wikia, have failed miserably or others, like Ask.com, have fallen to the margins of the search market.
Given all the effort to innovate the search market, it's no surprise that Microsoft's newest search effort, Bing, has people talking. The question is simple: Will it do any better than its predecessors? Frankly, I don't think Bing will be any more successful than earlier efforts in the search market. Why? The answer is simple: Google, the market leader, is still good enough for most search users, either business or consumer.
To topple a market leader, you not only have to offer a better product, you have to offer a new way of doing something that has cross-market appeal. The challenge isn't innovating. That's actually easier than it seems. The challenge is to innovate in a way that both techies and the grandma next door can both relate to and find useful.
So far, all the attempts to refine search have either tried to beat Google at its own game—i.e., Microsoft, Yahoo, Ask.com, Wikia, etc.—or they have tried to leverage arcane technologies that have little mass appeal.
For example, the Semantic Web has long promised to change search and the overall structure of the Web. But after years of research and endless talk, the Semantic Web has failed to capture the imaginations of users or businesses, leaving little in terms of actual results. Instead, the Semantic Web is still mostly theoretical after years of hand-wringing and research.
If the search market is ever innovated, I think it will be through chopping up the search process into discrete, niche functions. Twitter's real-time search offers us a glimpse of what different types of search might look like. But these new forms of search will augment and even complement Google's generic forms of Web search. They will not replace Google, at least not at first. If, however, enough of these new search niches arise, Google may find itself killed off by a death of a thousand cuts. But that potential scenario is years away and is contingent on enough new forms of search actually working out.
In the meantime, I think Google's place as the search market leader is safe for the time being.
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