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Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, will take 90 percent of the market over the next decade through increased spending on research and development, analysts at Cowen & Co. said in a note Wednesday.Google's 2007 research-and-development budget of $1.5 billion is almost double that of its closest rival, Yahoo Inc., the analysts said. Google's capital investments, estimated at $26 billion over the next five years, will finance development of the company's own servers and data centers, the note said.
Analysts: Google Will Take 90% of Market [chicagotribune.com]
10 years ago Google didn't even exist (at least not as a commercial company), what did the analysts back then predict for 2007?
10 years ago Google didn't even exist (at least not as a commercial company), what did the analysts back then predict for 2007?
Here are my predictions. They are as good as the analyst's.
1. I predict 10 years later that a new or unknown Search Engine will overtake Google.
2. Search Engines become obsolete, as people discover new ways to search the internet.
If no newcomer steps up, Google will end up with 90%.
as people discover new ways to search the internet.
I was reading an article on the semantic web a few days ago. Companies like Radar Networks are already building products including search. It will be interesting indeed.
At this time Google makes developers and management at MSN and Yahoo look like big time losers who fail to come up with something competitive despite all their money and market positions.
I think it's because the technology is maxed out. Or rather, every angle(link analysis etc.) to do search given the current state of the web today has already been developed. That and Google has been patenting whatever little(if any) is left. Maybe search with social features will pan out?
[edited by: kemikal at 1:28 pm (utc) on July 12, 2007]
a lot comes down to "money meets idea", imho!
the problem is, that the net is not changing as fast as it used to in the 90s... and 90% market share in this world is very possible!
P!
what a depressing thought - come on Y & MSN do something to stop this!
I suspect that in 10 yrs, new people, quite unknown to most people here, who are unencumbered with a fear of google or failure, will be running riot in the search market.
As for the percentages, who knows, but they say fortune favours the brave
The thing is, such a scenario is extremely unlikely given the history of high tech companies. Except for Microsoft, who have something of an artificial monopoly, no high tech company has ever dominated a specific market for very long.
Some companies like IBM and Apple have done well over an extended period, but only by regularly changing the focus of their company.
In 10 years time, the Indian and Chinese markets will be much more important, and I don't know how much of a brand Google is with internet users in those markets. It could be that homegrown search services will overtake Google in those countries, and that will have an ever increasing effect on Google's worldwide market share.
In 10 years time search may be completely unrecognisable, perhaps we'll even abandon a traditional search the same way we've abandoned Yahoo-style directories. It seems unthinkable now, but then so did the death of directories back in 1997.
This war is long since over, the data google has alone from having a tracking code on hundreds of millions of websites mixed with the data from search and data from conversions makes them the most powerful company on the globe. Information is power and no company on this planet less perhaps the cia has more. Mountains of cash will see that any comp is promptly purchased or outdeveloped.
Google search leading to Google adverts on the engine or serps loaded with sites containing Google cpc/cpm/cpa advertising leading to Google checkout. Google owned blogs, Google owned email, Google owned domains, Google partnerships with anyone who will not be bought. It is not 1996, the future belongs to Google.
Next step is, of course (if they haven't already done it) to project a much larger market than can ever exist. All those third-world laptops for every man, woman, child, and goat! And all searching using Google!
As any market matures, it's propensity for radical change becomes significantly reduced. You can see this everywhere you look, including tech companies - Microsoft/Macintosh, Coke/Pepsi, AMD/Intel. While these companies CAN be unseated, it isn't an easy thing to do and simply having a better product won't do it.
Mind share and market penetration are significantly different now, with established brands familiar to a significantly larger userbase. With large populations of users that have significant brand loyalty, it's hell to break into.
This isn't the wild west anymore.
[edited by: Jbrookins at 3:58 pm (utc) on July 12, 2007]
surrender minded
Where is the fire that drove messrs Brin & Page, Gates, Wozniak & Jobs etc , etc,
Is this the best the IT world has to offer today, folk who just want a tinsy winsy share of some elses pie
What percentage of web traffic is adult?
While the casual seeker of adult material may use Google, I'd bet that most dedicated adult-hounds use specialized search engines.
That alone, I think, makes the 90% figure impossible. As well, there are many other specialized search categories where perhaps casual users search on Google, but those that do regular searches in a particular field use a specialized search engine.
I think this figure depends a lot on how you define "search". Some people over on the Domain Names forum would have you include "type-in" traffic as search, again making the 90% figure unlikely.
Is using a price comparison site "search"?
[edited by: engine at 9:31 am (utc) on July 28, 2007]
as someone that plays in that market I can tell you most are pretty naff and not worth using - BTW the A subject if off limits here
[edited by: engine at 9:31 am (utc) on July 28, 2007]
The Gorg continues to assimilate. Who is next? It makes its rounds cutting large swaths of information super highway while the others stand on the side and catch the leftovers. You know, "Hey Google, can you throw us a bone please?" And, if there is any meat on that bone, you can bet The Gorg will be back to assimilate that on the next pass. :)
For millions of people, internet is Google.
I worked for very different clients from all kinds of industries (PPC) in the last 4 years and I can easily say Google`s search market share is higher than 75% now.
I strongly believe that the search war is over. Yahoo couldn`t do it. Microsoft couldn`t do it and these two companies (especially Microsoft) has all the money in the world.
My two cents...
Yet, besides Google's considerable inertia, capital and smarts, it seems Google gets something basic that's in Microsoft's blind spot...having more to do with mission, strategy, large-scale probability and human motive.
As for startups in search, I think the barriers to entry are too high anymore. How much does a data center cost?
Yes, 70 million to 1.2 billion is a big leap, but the world population is over 6 billion and growing, so that's still the vast majority of the potential market still not online. And those 1.2 billion are extremely concentrated in current rich countries rather than being spread out evenly over the globe, so their tastes may not represent worldwide future trends.
India and China together have about 2.5 billion people, most of them not yet online but about to be soon as their countries become the two top economies.
Those kinds of numbers are going to swamp the current users in America and Europe where the markets are already getting saturated. If the Indians and Chinese use something different to Google, something different to Ebay, something different to Windows, it will completely change the market shares of all the major internet companies.
But even if the number of internet users stayed the same, the underlying problem with 10 year predictions is the fast pace of technology. As I said above, with the exception of monopolies like Microsoft Windows, no tech company has ever dominated a particular market for an extended period of time. There's always been some unexpected wild card that's just come out of nowhere and stormed to the top often within a few years of its birth.
Who expected Sony to steal the gaming crown from Nintendo and Sega, two companies with decades of gaming experience? Who expected Apple to steal the portable music crown from Sony, the inventor of the Walkman? Who expected the decline of IBM's computer manufacturing in favour of an army of PC clones?
Betting on an incumbent to dominate a particular internet market 10 years from now is almost certainly going to turn out to be wrong, not because you should have bet on someone else but because the winner probably doesn't even exist yet.
1. Google
2. Yahoo
Whereas their competitors (Yahoo and MSN) are too busy selling Banner ads on their portals, talking to them makes one realize that they are not even interested in selling Paid search.
I think Google is doing a lot of research and development on Search and is the most aggressive among all 3 companies. They are following a policy of Build, Buy or Outsource.
They built their Adwords program from scratch, bought Urchin and renamed it as Google Analytics (the latest interface and reports will give most commercial analytics a run for their money) and outsourced their ad quality review program to their Hyderabad office in India.
Two years back lot of people said Google does not have Mindshare as Yahoo or MSN has. Gtalk, Orkut, Youtube and a host of other services have taken care of this.
Google has the largest number of tools and applications under development focussed on search. And this is a frightening thought as they are increasingly becoming Microsoft of the nineties.
In 10 years time, the Indian and Chinese markets will be much more important
No, they won't. First off, these are hopes fueled by U.S.-based large corporate conglomerates. Right now growth in these 2 countries is fueled by export of most manufacturing to these countries. The reason their growth is so huge is because of the giant gap in worker's income, which is now narrowing rapidly. Which, in term, will slow down growth. Also, there's no history of "consumerism" in these countries, and there may be laws preventing brainwash-marketing techniques, so it will be more difficult to market to them. Also, as in many other foreign countries, there's a fascination with U.S.-made merchandise, which is a problem to overcome if you want to sell chinese-made merchandise to chinese.
As for startups in search, I think the barriers to entry are too high anymore. How much does a data center cost?
I disagree. I think that a huge untapped potential of P2P computing (neurocomputing) will make a need for billion-dollar datacenters obsolete in the near future. There are billions of computers out there that sit plugged into the internet idling. This enormous processing power can and should be used. A distributed search engline like that, with a proper ranking algorythm, could easily go from 0 to #1.
Just think about mighty spam botnets out there.
