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60% of Google users said they would switch search engines if a better service were introduced.The survey also had bad news for Google's planned free email service, with fewer than 25% of respondents saying they would be very likely to use it.
If the survey is created on a sample that constitutes 5% of the total user market Google serves to, who cares if this 5% switching. I've no idea on the sample data so this is just another headline fly-by-night.
Then someone can start a topic about it and I'll get a bunch of free traffic to my B.S. article so maybe some of you will click on my advertisements.
Oh wait, thisismoney.com already did that.
So as soon as you publish your article digitalv let us know and we'll give it a good once over, should be interesting.
I wonder how many of those polled believe Elvis is alive.
such enthusiastic discussion
There were a couple points in this thread where the discussion wasn't so much about the details of the article, but about the bigger picture issues such as customer loyalty and retention, the difficulty in breaking customer habits, etc. The article itself may
contain no facts, or very poorly reasoned conclusions based on inadequate evidence, or self serving evidence, or lacking any apparent solid research
but that's not to say there can't be valuable discussion to come from it. :)
that's not to say there can't be valuable discussion to come from it
Oh, I agree, it took me a long time to sort of figure out how these search forums work, it's very different from the technical forums, takes much much more work to get at the insights some of the posters definitely have than in say the apache forum, where jdMorgan can absolutely answer almost any question in a few lines in most cases.
It is interesting when you go in and read the primary sources that underlie most of the discussion here and compare them to how the subject matter is interpreted by most posters, myths that have little foundation in reality seem all too eager to spring to life, and often bury what is not a myth, makes it hard to dig through it all and decide what is real and what is nonsense.
As for me, I actually think google is the best and as long as its founders don't decide to sell it and retire it will remain the best, I believe.
because of desperation that google brought into the hearts of members of this forum in the last months
A search monoculture is definitely not in anyone's best interests, that's for sure, no matter how good the results are. But since it's a fairly recent memory to me of altavista and hotbot being top players, I'm not overly attached to google, they were better, the companies they beat were worse, or dropped the ball, but the florida etc updates did not make better results that I could see, it only takes a few mistakes, remember Mac, Atari, Lotus, Netscape, WordPerfect? All market leaders, or at least potentially so in the case of Mac, all beaten by MS, and their own mistakes.
That's what made this thread interesting, not the article itself, but the idea that something as meaningless as a search url will inspire any real loyalty, if that were true we'd still be using Altavista or Hotbot, but neither we nor non geek users do, so obviously results matter.
There is no way MS is not going to grab a big piece of Google's pie, they have control of the platform, they have the default search option built in, all they need to do now is give decent results, google pre florida would be more than adequate.
The changes were depressing to my clients, that's for sure, but it was their fault, I warned them about using duplicate content but they wouldn't listen.
Apples and Oranges.
MS took an early lead way back in DOS days, and what has kept them on top is the fact that there are layers upon layers of dependant software and technology that would make it painful to impossible for many corporations to switch away from an MS-OS at this point.
With Google, its a different story altogether. There are virtually no dependant technologies on Google Search, except maybe AdWords, but that hardly counts, because people using the service are "edge" people who'll switch in a heartbeat as soon as something that pays better comes along.
Google's smartest move at this point, IMHO, is to leverage its current popularity with services like GMail, AdWords, Blogger, etc etc, which can create dependance. Changing e-mail addresses can be painful, you pretty much have to "ghost" or forward, or just plain leave in place, all your old addresses, if you're at all concerned about missing out on that one important e-mail in a thousand spams.
Search is something that you can almost guarantee someone will come up with a better way of doing, eventually, and when that happens, Google search will become an also ran. They'd better have a business plan well in advance for when that happens, because when it DOES happen (and it will), they'll only have a matter of months, at best, to react. And a few months simply isn't enough time to revamp your search techniques and sorting algorythms in any fundamental, meaningful way. Even MS knows this, and they've slated 2-5 years for developping their search engine strategy. If what they come up with is on par, or even close to being on par, with Google, then Google Search is dead. Because MS will bundle it with their OS just like they have with every other "killer app" they failed to predict, and just copied or bought outright. (Anyone remember Word Perfect? Netscape? Lotus 1-2-3? Lotus Smart-Suite? Any of the dozen or so presentation packages that preceded PowerPoint? etc etc)
Right now Google has high visibility, and a good public reputation. That's small leverage. With every additional service that has some genuine "stickyness" they add in, it increases their leverage. Eventually, Google will have to become more portal-oriented if they plan on long term survival.
I'd say this is my last two bits on the subject, but I enjoy the sound of my own type too much.
Eventually, Google will have to become more portal-oriented if they plan on long term survival.
Isn't this what altavista said as they started their downward journey? Seems to ring a bell. If that's their plan you might start thinking about unloading those new google shares over the next year, has Hotmail ever made money to speak of? It used to be a loss leader, haven't followed it last two years.
Anyway, I stopped being a google fan last november, for various reasons, and the wave of 'updates' have done nothing to inspire any feeling of loyalty in me. The main way for a search engine to create customer loyalty is to give predictably good search results, Google has not been giving predictably good search results for over 6 months now, that's a very risky thing to do, even if it is meant to improve serp quality over the long run, which I think is only part of the story.
But it's very possible that search is just going to be another basically free web thing, like most browsers, that started with big dreams and ended up being basically a commodity, that's not a hard scenario to visualize, right now yahoo is giving more or less pre florida results, if I had to use them only it wouldn't really affect me very much to be honest, I'd find more or less most of the stuff I'm looking for. MSN should have little trouble doing the same unless they really screw up, which they might do, running a search engine server farm on windows boxes is not a very good place to start, and might handicap their flexibility and reliability like it did when hotmail switched to windows.
Eventually, Google will have to become more portal-oriented if they plan on long term survival.
Even if there was/is another search engine that provides 'better' results people may stick with google for other reasons. The clean simple interface was one factor in google's rise to success and it will probably be a factor in people sticking with google.
The clean simple interface was one factor in google's rise to success and it will probably be a factor in people sticking with google.
Brett Tabke recently posted this link [battellemedia.com] in the msn search forum with this quote from Bill Gates at a recent conference:
"They (google) have a way of formatting things that has had some appeal," Gates said. "It will be matched."
So apparently you're not the only one to have noticed that the google interface is part of its success, but so very very easy to copy in terms of simplicity that it can hardly be considered anything that will protect their position. Presumably when he says 'it will be matched' it's safe to assume it already is matched in appearance.
Having a "pure search" page will hold them well for a long time, until more and more browsers come equiped with a search bar. After that, what's the point of having a clean front page? You don't need it, because people aren't going to visit your front page to do a search. They're going to do what people with Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, etc already do: type their search into a little text box in a corner of their browser.
I can't remember the last time I actually went to the google home page.
