MSN, Yahoo, & Google’s Stranglehold on the Market
While discussing a vertical search idea with someone, I couldn’t resist thinking about how the idea may be doomed to second-tier success. Before it even began.
No one will topple Google in the search space for the same reason that no one will topple Microsoft in the personal computing space. There was a time when they didn’t have a strangle hold on the market. A time when a competitor had a chance to take a significant slice of the pie. That time has come and gone. Even a company with the money and resources like Microsoft and Yahoo can’t compete with Google in its current state. They own the market and everyone else is playing catch up.
How do you compete with a company when their service has become so popular it is a verb? People don’t search, they google. How do you compete with a company when users don’t even choose their service, they just associate it with the task on a subconscious level? I find myself doing this. I want to search for something but I don’t think about what site to go to. I don’t even consider going to Yahoo, MSN, or Ask. I just go to Google and start searching.
Is Google’s search engine superior to that of Ask, Yahoo, or MSN? Maybe MSN. But Yahoo and Ask have results that are quite similar. In some cases Google’s results are even spammier due to every spammer in the world aspiring to be number one in the Big G.
They don’t offer features that Yahoo doesn’t. They don’t have key partnerships that Yahoo doesn’t. Yet Yahoo, and all other search engines, are stuck on catch-up mode.
This is partly why I was initially excited to hear about the possibility of a Yahoo / MSN merger. If they can’t compete with Google on their own, would they have a better chance of competing if they combined resources and market share? I know there are many who are skeptical and I also have my doubts. Especially since I also recently went through a merger and I’ve seen first hand the issues and problems that can arise when two companies are thrown into the ring and asked to work together. That said, wouldn’t working against a common enemy unite them? I don’t know….but someone needs to step up and give them a run for their money.