No Firefox of Search? I’ll Settle for the iPod of Search Instead
First things first: If you haven’t yet upgraded your web browser to Firefox 3, please stop reading right now and do so here. Done? OK, please continue reading.
Firefox can certainly be considered an upstart in the browser space. In a short span of less than four years, Firefox has evolved from a fledgling open source toy to the #2 web browser in the market, with almost 20% market share – behind only Windows-bundled Internet Explorer. Whether this is due to its technical superiority, strong community, or underdog status, Firefox certainly has captured the hearts of the Internet Intelligentsia, and is now an indispensable part of every web power user’s toolbox.
Mark Evans openly wonders why there isn’t a Firefox-equivalent in the search engine space. Surely if Firefox can severly put a dent in Internet Explorer’s armor, why can’t any search upstarts do the same for Google?
There is one very significant difference I believe:
If you wanted to compete in the browser space, it is very possible for you to build a competitive browser within a short amount of time which offers your users a unique value proposition (e.g. Firefox’s plug-in framework) and superior performance (e.g. Firefox is faster, more standards-compliant, and more stable) compared to the incumbent product (Internet Explorer 6, circa 2004).
If you wanted to compete in the search space, while it may still be possible to build a search engine which offers your users a unique value proposition (e.g. Mahalo’s human-powered search), but it is next to impossible to offer a product that produces superior performance (e.g. “better” search results) than Google within a short amount of time.
Search is a product that simply gets better with time. The longer your search engine has been around, the deeper and more comprehensive your index will be. And Google basically has close to a decade’s head start over everyone else. There is just no way any search startup can match the breadth and reach of Google’s search index in a short amount of time. Search is still about the long tail, and you can can crawl a lot of tail in 10 years
But unfortunately, users are a demanding bunch. Once they try your new search engine a few times and realize that you can’t provide the relevant results they need, they will hop right back to Google, regardless of your unique value proposition.
Another important difference is that Microsoft basically left Internet Explorer for dead after version 6.0 shipped in 2001. Google is not as complacent as Microsoft was, and has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars right back into the product – even long after Google has already established itself as the alpha dog of the search world. Startups also simply don’t have the millions of dollars to match.
(Ironically, the only search player left who do have gazillions of dollars to pump into its product is Microsoft. And unsurprisingly, that’s exactly what Microsoft is planning to do.)
I’m skeptical that any search engine startup can effectively chip away Google’s 70% market share anytime soon.
If you want to beat Google, you need to change the rules of the game: Move away from traditional algorithmic, machine-indexed search and into the social and human data-driven search model that Danny Sullivan envisions.
And I don’t want to sound like sheep, but I do agree with Steve Rubel (as well as most of the San Fransisco echo chamber) that FriendFeed has the best shot right now to do so.
FriendFeed is accumulating incredible amounts of social data at an alarming rate, and it cleverly disguises a search engine within it’s innocent-looking interface which is perfect for executing Danny’s Search 4.0 vision.
You have user-generated content… naturally why not have user-generated search indexes? Because every piece of data that goes into FriendFeed is some human being’s edited recommendation or commentary, the amount of frivolous or superfluous content from FriendFeed is kept at a minimum. Complement this data with a broad-based algorithmic search (Wikia, perhaps?) and you have a combination that may possibly be a formidable foe for Google.
Portable radios, walkmans and CD players used to duke it out for the consumer electronics dollar, as well as the auditory attention of the daily commuter. Apple changed the rules of the game when it introduced the iPod to us.
Even if there is no Firefox of search, I’ll rather settle for the iPod of search instead.
Great insight into the search market.
Mark
I find the analogy odd.
FireFox is a browser, something individual and used by many individuals. I myself use 3 browser brands. MSIE 7/8/Mobile, FireFox and Opera Mobile. How many browsers can you use ? FEW. How many computers you need to run a browser ? 1
Whereas Internet Search is a web application and one of many many web applications out there. Unlike browsers, I use a huge list of search engines and other web applications. How many web appls can you use ? Tremendous ! How many computers you need to run a web app? Many ! Thousands of servers.
Therefore the analogy is wrong. Secondly Google is more than Search. Microsoft is more than Google.
Internet Explorer is not dead. MSIE 8 should be out of beta soon and it will support more open browser standards (in fact better than FireFox from what I know…) Lack of plugins compared to FF ? What ? There are so many. But I need just one. http://www.ie7pro.com/
You should know by now, the more plugins you dump in FireFox, the slower it crawls and the problems there is. So much for choice.
Microsoft is not stupid enough to compete with Google for the sake of it. A STC is not cheap to host in any country. Unlike Google, Microsoft serves more Enterprise Customers which have really tough expectations and requirements. A STC goes way beyond just Search for Enterprises.
Oops… I shall not say too much !
@Mark – Thanks!
@Fat Guppy – Haha… somehow I got the feeling that you were going to leave a comment here. Welcome back from your vacation!
I don’t find the analogy odd at all.
No one is claiming that the browser industry == search industry, so your descriptions of the two is irrelevant.
The analogy is simply that in both “industries” (a term I’ll use loosely), there is a supremely dominant incumbent, and a bunch of smaller players are trying to punch through and gain market share in a significant way.
Firefox was able to do that in the browser space, but no one is able to do that (yet) in the search space.
One can argue that Yahoo at 13% share is still significant, but if you remember that Yahoo was once upon a time in Google’s enviable position way before Google was conceived and that shines a whole different light on the direction that they have been heading for the past decade.
Microsoft > Google in certain areas, just like Google > Microsoft in other areas, and just like believe it or not, IBM > both Google and Microsoft in yet other areas.
Regarding IE: I meant to say that MS got complacent and basically ignored IE for many years once version 6 shipped. It wasn’t until when Mozilla/Firefox became a serious threat (around 2004?) that MS buckled up and started putting money back into IE instead. I don’t think anyone rational will dispute this.
Anyway, Microsoft was not even the main point of my article. And at 7.9% share, Live.com still has a ways to go to become relevant in any search engine competition discussion with Google. Not saying that it can’t be done, but it sure will be an uphill battle.