German web portal Web.de drops Google

Switch to Inktomi - Web.de still gets AdWords from Google

[Fischerlaender]

One of the leading german web portals, Web.de, dropped Google as its backup search engine and delivers now Inktomi search data. Web.de spokesman Andreas Horst said, that Web.de "wanted to stay flexible". According to heise.de, Horst negated that the switch is because of some quality problems with Google. This was claimed by the german newspaper "Die Welt".

In January 2002, Web.de dropped FAST/Alltheweb to switch to Google. The reason then was that Google was clearly cheaper than FAST.

For me this definitely has to do with the ever-growing marketshare (and therefor power) of Google, especially in Germany.

[Rumbas]

Wow, one of the first Google drops we've seen! Thanks for the heads up.

>has to do with the ever-growing marketshare

Not sure I get your reasoning here FL. Do you think Web.de feels Google is too big?

[heini]

I can't help but think that mostly financial reasons have lead to this decision. If web.de were concerned about Google getting too big why do they stay with Adwords? That's what makes Google fat...
As to quality problems, sure Google has some problems as of lately but checking the german INK results returned is not exactly thrilling either.

[angiolo]

Bad news. Inktomi has more spammers.

[Fischerlaender]

Not sure I get your reasoning here FL. Do you think Web.de feels Google is too big?

Given that Web.de was honest saying the switch had no financial background, I was just guessing what could be the reason.

When Web.de is saying that they want to be flexible, it seems to me that they are not very happy about Google's development in the last two years. With News Search and now Froogle, Google is becoming more and more like a portal. And I'm sure they will follow this way with their IPO dollars.

So Web.de is stuck between a rock and a hard place: They are very keen on the AdWords money, but are afraid that Google is getting more and more of their traffic. On the other hand now they buy search data from their well established portal competitor Yahoo ...

Just a side note:
I remember talking with the Web.de managing director two years ago right after their switch from FAST to Google. Then it was mainly because Google's offer was far better than that of FAST.

[Crush]

Just looked at my serps on web.de and cannot find a single site of mine ( I have 20) what a load of rubbish

[viggen]

Web.de brought me over the last two years on my german site 1.2% of the SE Traffic.

i wonder if others got more out of Web.de

[Fischerlaender]

1.2% seems to be a rather average figure. But I'm sure they could increase their numbers, if they would focus a little bit more on search, just as Yahoo now intends to do.