Forum Moderators: goodroi
I think that soon there will be somethink like a "search engines oligarchy".
It seems that they meet and have brainstorm to find new ideas to pluck their cickens.
I remember few thinks:
- realnames: it was terrific at the beginning; now can be useful in some algos. But cickens were plucked.
- Inktomy: few months after the big deal, most of the Inktomy partners fired Inktomi. And chickens were plucked..
- Looksmart: I think that the one time fee is still useful, but problably chickens will be forced to move to PPC.
- Fast is going to move in the Inktomi direction.
- Ditto for Altavista
The first step it to pay to be present.
The second step is to pay per click.
What will happen with Google, DMOZ and Yahoo?
Has to be on the cards, my bet would be on google offering an ink scheme before the end of this year
>something like a "search engines oligarchy".
I think it will be more like a dictatorship run by Bill Gates. Smart Tags are pretty scary stuff to search engines. They stand to take a huge chunk of their traffic away.
google ipo [webmasterworld.com]
google ipo [webmasterworld.com]
google ipo [webmasterworld.com]
google ipo [webmasterworld.com]
Work for a pre-IPO organization that has consistently been regarded as the best search engine on the web! The award-winning Google search engine is rapidly growing in popularity around the globe. Google is available in 26 languages and more than half our traffic comes from outside the United States. Now we want more than half of our revenue to come from outside the United States. We need to grow our presence in the UK and are looking for an exceptional leader to drive the establishment of our London office.
[google.com...]
Google preps $250m IPO
[theregister.co.uk...]
Google is urged to go public
[news.zdnet.co.uk...]
Google not searching for float [silicon.com]
Why the reversal? -
"A sure indication that the dotcom frenzy has finished is the estimated $250 million float price. A year ago, we'd be looking at $3 billion or something equally fantastic."
The feeler came back too low.
We had a stat here (can't find) that said 60% of the searches were now coming straight from the google homepage. While that could certainly be purposely placed disinformation, it feels about right looking at my logs. So, they have effectively 'borrowed' Yahoo's brand and may be just about ready to stand on their own multi-colored one. (Look how much press Sergey gets just talking about money. BTW, Sergey and/or Larry, stop by pubconference [pubconference.com] and I'll buy you a round.)
It's been a while since I messed with the VC's, and I'm very fuzzy on the details, but I think the flip -exit in VC parlance- takes about a 6:1 ratio, so if the $100M figure is right, they're looking for close to 3 times what Sergey was told the float might produce. If Google were mine, I'd certainly back away from that.
As for the copyright/cache, it's a very complex issue, and while I think the cache may generate legal problems, I don't think the recent ruling by the Supreme Court will bring it to the forefront -it's going to take a direct challenge to do that. Besides, they could park that in the courts for 2 years at a minimum. Long enough to do the IPO at a better price than today's market.
From the outside looking in, the only reason I could see to rush to market would be if a competitor or competitive technology is in the wings.
While it would be a major blow, I don't think that Google needs Yahoo anymore. Google has probably gained many of its users from Yahoo but now is ready to stand on its own legs.
Given that Google also has a competing directory, surely Yahoo would want to move to a provider of search listings only.
