On top of the world
But for how long? Rivals gearing up to do battle
Firmly ensconced as the Internet's most popular search service, and with a $2.7 billion public stock offering in its future, Google Inc. seems to be sitting on top of the world.
But the world is round. It's easy to roll off. And there are several rich and canny competitors eager to give Google a push.
Archrival Yahoo has just unveiled a powerful new suite of searching tools that some consider at least as good as Google's. Ask Jeeves Inc., a victim of the turn-of-the-century Internet bust, plans to claw its way back to prominence with a well-regarded search technology called Teoma. And then, of course, there's Microsoft Corp. Simmering in the company's test kitchen is a smorgasbord of new search technologies scheduled for later this year.
Nobody thinks Google is destined for a hard landing. Experts say the company's excellent reputation and steady deployment of powerful new features ensure that it will remain one of the leading Internet companies. ''They've captured the world's imagination," said Allen Weiner, search engine analyst for Gartner Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.
But in the long run, Weiner believes that Google must expand beyond its core search business to fend off competitors with the skill and money to match Google feature for feature. ''Over time, as more and more competitors come, I believe they're going to need to be more than somebody who provides you with search results," he said. Weiner imagines Google, along with rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, as the Internet equivalents of major television networks CBS, ABC, and NBC, with all three serving up a variety of entertainment and information services, as well as pure search.
If Weiner is right, Ask Jeeves may fill in as the Internet's Fox Network -- the unheralded upstart that made good. Ask Jeeves made its name as a ''natural language" search service that allowed users to type in questions like, ''Who won the World Series in 1935?" Today its chief claim to fame is Teoma, a search technology created at Rutgers University that Ask Jeeves bought in 2001.
''Users, as well as our competitors, are starting to realize that Teoma has a very different approach to results," said Ask Jeeves chief executive Steve Berkowitz. The difference lies in Teoma's ability to identify clusters of websites with a high probability of providing useful information.
Google ranks sites according to the number of other sites that link to them. A site that has lots of links is very popular and probably has lots of useful information, so it pops up near the top of any search. This is why Google searches are so good at providing useful information.
Teoma takes it a step further. It gives higher ratings for links to pages totally devoted to the same subject. Imagine a baseball page with two links, one to another baseball page, the other to a general sports page. Google might treat both links equally; Teoma gives a higher rating to the baseball-only link. The service uses this information to create an extra layer of search results that are much more likely to be what the user is looking for.
Danny Sullivan, editor of the newsletter Search Engine Watch, is an Ask Jeeves fan. ''Teoma has excellent technology," he said. ''They'd be another top choice I'd point anybody to if they were looking for an alternative to Google." Weiner is also an admirer. But he doubts that Ask Jeeves, with its 14.4 million users in March, compared to 65 million for Google, 48 million for Yahoo, and 45 million for MSN, can break into the front rank of search companies.
''I don't think they have the brand power to take on these three companies," Weiner said.
Until February, Yahoo actually used Google's search service on its site. Now it's rolled out its own home-brewed search technology, cobbled together from various search companies that Yahoo has acquired in recent years. Yahoo officials declined to comment. But Sullivan said the transition to its own search product has been a solid success for Yahoo, mainly because the company's market share has stayed the same.
''They rolled out a new technology in February, and switched to using it instead of Google, and nobody even noticed," said Sullivan. He thinks that if Yahoo's search quality had suffered, users would have fled to Google, but that didn't happen.
This leaves Microsoft's MSN as the wild card. The company currently uses Yahoo-owned search technology. But that'll change later this year as Microsoft introduces a custom-built suite of new services. The company has announced plans for MSN Newsbot, a news search engine that will remember the stories that a user is most interested in and display the latest news updates at every visit.
Microsoft is also planning a new ''geolocal" search service to compete with similar offerings from Google and Yahoo. The system will display localized business information, enabling a user to quickly find restaurants, grocery stores, or movie theaters in any community, along with maps and directions on how to get there.
Karen Redetzki, product manager for MSN, says Google's big lead in search leaves her undaunted. ''There's a huge opportunity for any search portal to come out and be more relevant and have better results than the others," she said. Besides, the history of the search business is full of once-hot properties such as AltaVista and Lycos, that faded when consumers found something better.
There's no reason to assume that such a fate awaits Google. But if it plans to stay on top, Google will have to work at it.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 