I recently had an discussion* with a colleague about why Google rules the internet. We were having our bi-monthly discussion (like all start ups do) about how we’d love to launch a search company; “we’d do it some much better”, “our interface will be way cool”, “think of the money”.
“A little top down thinking about crazy projects is light relief in these hard times and I actively encourage it, my secret hope it it might plant the seed of a future project the will wipe out my student loan once and for all.
My argument was along the lines of, 1. Anyone can collect data and store it for search and 2. What makes Google the best is the way the molest your query and give you what you want not what you asked for. This is why when you type in “june sarpong” you don’t get any calendars or things happening in June. This, my argument continued was the USP the thing no one else did as well or at all.
“What You Want, Not What You Think You Want should be Google’s new mantra they could shorten it to they snappy WYWNWYTYW, say it with me, W, Y, W, N, W, Y, T, Y, W!
You’d think with Microsoft desperate to get any sort of traction with their online real-estate, Yahoo! Fucked! they would e trying hard to out do Google in the search space. This week however I was checking the server logs (as I do every Monday morning) and I noticed something strange, Google as usual was the Number 1 spider on our servers but second was Cuil! Imagine my surprise.
“Figures from Net Applications show that Cuil had a market share of less than 0.01 per cent in October.
Microsoft and Yahoo! the respective Number Twos in online search aren’t even out-indexing a poxy start up like Cuil. You might not be able to compete on search power but at least have the courtesy to provide you dwindling user base with up-to-date results!
“Google’s profits were up 17% to $1.21bn (£608m) for the three months to the end of December, 2007.
*argument.
Tags: Cuil, Google, Microsoft Corp.