Startup Diaries

The Search Wars Are Back

As many people noted today, most of the initial reactions to the new search engine from Microsoft, Bing, are quite good. In the past weeks we all read so many negative things about it, that I think we can all admit that we expected a complete failure. But surprisingly, Bing is actually very good.

The big question now is whether this is enough to compete with Google?

I think Microsoft was very smart in the way they developed Bing. They realised that they can't and should not try to fight Google over index size or even ranking of search results. Google are just too good there. But with the combination of their aquasition of Power set, and integration with some of their owned content sites like Farecast what they achived is something else - a more relevent way to display search results.

Search for example for "Lakers Results" in Bing and in Google and you will see the difference. WHile both point to the Lakers site as the first result, Bing also shows you the latest game results and the next games schedule, right in the search results.

Add to that some really useful new UI elements such as playing videos right in the search results, auto preview for sites and relates searches tab and you get a quite impressive search experience.

That said, this is still not enough to beat Google. The problem is that in order to beat Google, you actually need to break users' habit. And this is the hardest possible task. In order to do so, Microsoft needs one of the following:

• A "killer" feature - A feature that is so good that it will make people start to use it just for that.
• A "killer" marketing campaign - After the semi successful "I'm a PC" campaign, can Microsoft pull a winner for Bing?
• Use their "windows advantage" - Basically integrate Bing so hard into Windows 7 that users will just have to start and use it. This is unlikely as the last thing Microsoft needs right now is more anti trust issues.

Another very interesting scenario could be if Microsoft buys Twitter and integrate it into Bing... Twitter "real time" search is getting better and better and could potentially be this killer feature. Make the twitter search box to actually do Bing search, and you suddenly get millions of new users...

Apple Beats Google

Amazing... Today Apple market cap has passed Google (and just as a small reminder to all of us - Microsoft market cap is still bigger than both Google and Apple).

We don't trust you anymore Google

People who know me know that I've been complaining on the quality of Google' search result in the last year. I keep finding myself going more and more to pages two, three and four in the search results.
Now it seems that I'm not the only one in this boat. Techcrunch reported that a study from the university of California claims that less than 50% of all users trust Google results.

Is this trust issue is enough to push users to alternative search engines like the ones coming from Wikia and Mahalo?
I guess time will tell...

Google Gears is Old Story

I don't get all the buzz around Google Gears.
yes, offline web application are really cool, but in order to do it Google makes you download and install an executable. Hello? Anyone heard the name ActiveX?
If you have to install something, making an application to work offline is simply not such an exciting thing (and they still don't do it right. I keep getting JavaScript errors in web sites since I installed the Gears app).

Technorati Tags: Google Gears, Google, RIA

Will They Ever Stop?

Another Google acquisition... Anyone still remember the time when Google was still small, hip company we all loved to love???

Technorati Tags: Google, acquisition, postini

Open Ad Network And How To Kill Google

Nice post By Sean Ammirati in Read/Write Web about the need for an Open Ad Network (like an open source project).

The idea is to develop an open source ad network that will let publishers get 100% of revenues from ads, and build a business model based on services.

Although the idea is interesting, I think there are two main problems with it:

1. Ad networks today generate millions (and billions) of dollars in revenue from taking a cut from each ad revenue. This model is so successful because it can scale up all the time.
   get more publishers to use your network - instantly get more money.
   whenever a publisher gets bigger and more successful, also your revenues from it get bigger.
   Compare that to a services model and you will see the big difference. There is a limit to how much revenue each publisher can generate for you.
2. The real issue here is also the ROI you give to advertisers. Today most advertisers go to Google because of the high ROI they can generate for them (because of their excellent targeting system).
   Where most of the advertisers go, most of the publishers will go.
   kind of a magic circle that is very hard to break

 

So where is the solution?
How do you come up with the Google Killer?
My answer to this is Video!

No one today (including Google) knows how to target ads to videos (although some companies are trying to do that - see AdBrite and ScanScout).
First of all there is the technical difficulty of parsing the video and get all the words (compared to text) out of it.
But I believe that it doesn't end here. We use words in video in a very different way than we use it in text.
In video we explain much of the things using pictures and sound. I think that in most videos, even if you parsed all the words out of it, you will still not be able to actually understand what the video is all about.

So what does it all means?
It means that in video, Google doesn't have any advantage on the next guy. This is the place where other players can gain momentum, gain publishers and advertisers by keeping to themselves a lower cut of the cake, and offer some new innovative products.

New Search Experience Wanted

I was looking into our use of caching in our NuConomy Studio platform, and wanted to learn more about web caching techniques.
I tried using Google again and again, each time chancing my search terms and strategy, and each time getting bad results.

This is not the first time I'm disappointed with Google search results. In the last year, the search results are just getting worse and worse.
I don't know the answer (and I hope there is an answer) but I would really want one of the new search startups out there giving us a fresh new way to search for things.

Earning More From Google Ads

I stabled over the web site of TopPayingKeyword.com today.
There are a lot of companies that offers keyword research tools, to help bid on the right keyword in Google. At first look I thought this is just another one of them, but it appears they offer something completely different.

When you put Google Adsense advertisements in your site, you share the revenue of every click with Google. Advertisements with higher CPC/CPM will get you and Google more money.
Now, when advertisers buy keywords, some of the keywords are more expensive than others. Following this logic, advertisements that shows up near this keywords in a site are more expensive, thus generating more money to you (the publisher) from every user click.

So TopPayingKeywords actually help you determine what key words you should use in your site content as much as you can, in order to make Google show more expensive advertisements.

Don't get me wrong, personally I don't believe in this system. I think that in the long run, good content will bring more users which will translate into higher revenues.
Still, their approach make you think on how Google AdSense works, and if advertisers really gets what they should for their money.

Google - Be More Evil!

No one can stand and call me a "Google" lover. I wrote a couple of harsh posts about them in the past, and I publicly state my disagreement with many things they do.
still, I find that I got to stand up for their defense after reading another attack on the way they integrate their services into their search results.

Why shouldn't Google embed YouTube and Google Video videos into the search results? Why shouldn't they promote their own services over others (in a clear manner of course)?
It's their search engine. They spend a lot of money to make make it work, why they are not allowed to enjoy it?
It's their business. They are a public company. They need to earn money. This is their purpose in life(they lost the right to any other objective when they became public). Why shouldn't they use their own services to do it?
Common people, don't you think we all became a little too sensitive??

The only company that got the same reactions is Microsoft. Everyone said that putting Live search the default search engine in IE7 would be an unfair advantage to Microsoft.

But there is one big difference between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft was declared a Monopoly in court. Google didn't.
So yes... Maybe this is what we should do. Maybe we should declare Google a monopoly in the search business. And then they will not be allowed to use their search engine to promote other Google services. But until than... Hey. Stop crying foul all the time and simply fight them back.

The Online Calendar Wars

IN his latest post Michael Arrington wrote about the great traffic Google Calendar gets compared to Yahoo and Microsoft similar services.

I just can't understand Microsoft.

I use MS Outlook 2007 as the main mail and calendar application. No doubt that it is one (if not the) best applications in this category.
I don't use Google calendar because it can't synch well with my Outlook.

There are millions of other Outlook and Outlook Express users around the world. All Microsoft needs to do is to open a web site where all those users can view and share and synch their Outlook calendars.
Add some integration with other Live services and events start ups and you have a winner!

They even already have most of the technology as part of Outlook Web Access that comes with Exchange. So my question is - Microsoft, what are you waiting for???