T-Online to launch own Desktop Search Engine

Germanys biggest ISP goes into search market

[ThomasB]

According to an article [wiwo.de] of a well regarded german business magazine T-Online will offer a desktop search engine starting thursday.

The engine will be a modified version of what Copernic [copernic.com] offers to customers since quite a while.

It will be quite interresting to see how a big ISP (marketshare about 65% in Germany) rolls out this new product and how G, Y! and MSN can compete as the T-Online version will probably be in german.

[Rumbas]

Good catch Thomas. It will be very interesting to see what that does for T-Online in terms of more users.

As far as I remember, the traffic from search on T-online is nearly non-existant, so maybe this will lift "search" a bit?

Funny, however, that they use Copernic, when the default web search is Google?

[ThomasB]

Funny, however, that they use Copernic, when the default web search is Google?

I doubt Google would allow anybody to modify their Desktop Search and rebrand it. ;)

[Rumbas]

Hehe, good point! :)

How is traffic from T-online these days? On our german sites, we certainly don't see them flooding our servers.

[Pass the Dutchie]

T-online currently contributes about .05% of click throughs for many of our German sites with 90% of traffic deriving directly from the big G.de This figure is this particularly low partly due to the fact that first 10 sites listed in T-Online’s results are disguised* as Adwords. Because of click through fraud and due to the size of G's SE market share we currently do not pay for placement. In Germany T-Online is Google's largest Adword contributor and it would surly be in G's interest to create a desktop for local users which in theory would increase revenue for both companies. However unless this desktop is truly revolutionary (which it won't be) it will not make much of a difference. T-online has aprox 60% ISP market penetration and aprox 95% of its users currently use T-Online’s ISP software which forces the users to use T-Online’s email, browser, and search function etc. This desktop will be treated by Joe Public as nothing more than a gimmick which will add very little in return to T-online's investment.

*vast majority of users do not know the difference

[ThomasB]

Pass the Dutchie, would you mind explaining how you got the 95% of people using the T-Online software? Especially thanks to the bigger penetration of DSL and Routers I think the number is lower, probably 40-60%.

[Pass the Dutchie]

thanks to the bigger penetration of DSL and Routers I think the number is lower, probably 40-60%

As noted above this is an approximate figure based on the following to illustrate my point.

Only 28% of T-Online's domestic subscriber base are on DSL (source: Ovum's EuroView 2004) Dialup subscribers need to use T-online software to access the net.

Unless users use third party software such as PPP over Ethernet Protocol or third party routers then without the additional software and technical PPPOEP/networking skills then T-Online's subscribers are stuck with T-Online software.

[ThomasB]

I think the 28% are somewhere around 35-40% now as the number of DSL users rised by 48% in 2004.

Nevertheless you can use T-Online via analog/ISDN without the T-Online software according to their help [www2.service.t-online.de].