Michael Martinez - 6:55 pm on Sep 20, 2000 (gmt 0)

NOTE: I've had trouble editing my messages, so I want to clarify a couple of points here. Sorry. I'm used to going back and editing a message after I've posted it and seen how it looks.

"It's funny, but sad."

Why is it funny but sad? I mean, it's ironic but regrettable (to me) that I've witnessed a fundamental transition in comments on the changes in Looksmart's business model. I don't think the people who pointed out they were providing content before are the same people saying this is the wave of the future. I may be mistaken. What has brought about the change in the popular opinion?

The other point I want to clarify is what I'm referring to when I speak of a split in competition. What I mean is that I think the yellow pages services will compete with each other, and the general indexing services will compete with each other.

For a long time, now, many observers have been predicting an industry shakeout among the search services. Maybe what we're seeing is the beginning of an industry breakup that may lessen the almost inevitable shakeout. With two classes of information servers, the two child industries will be able to complement each other as the members of the parent industry try to but with only marginal success.

Specialized directories may be the only profitable way for most search services to compete and survive in the world dominated by Yahoo! But those specialized directories will have to supplement their databases with more general indexes.

We've seen this pattern already for more than a year. The experimentation is now really shifting to developing a well-focused business model as the multi-index technology seems to have been developed sufficiently to support some experimentation with altering revenue streams.