NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search Engine Panel at _at_d.Tech.Chicago
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Search Engine Panel at _at_d.Tech.Chicago
Cliff Kurtzman (cliff_at_tenagra.com)
Thu, 14 May 1998 02:08:04 -0500 (CDT)
Ray Taylor <taylor_at_bizbiz.com> wrote:
>
>I attended the same _at_d.tech session and agree the panellists said
>nothing. The reason in my view was that saying nothing was safer that
>admitting they were doing a very bad job of it. As I think the guy from
>AltaVista put it: "the Web needs organising". If it isn't the job of the
>search engines (or portals, or directories, or whatever they are calling
>themselves this week) to "organise" the Web, who's job is it?
I was there too for part of the panel and I'd have to say that this is a
fair assessment. I was rather amazed to hear them all taking about wanting
to be portals -- with no one talking about how they want to be an insanely
great search engine. I kept waiting for someone to grab the panelists by
the shoulders and shake some sense into them. They got where they are
today (along with their tremendous stock valuations) by being search
engines. Yet figuring out how to be a better search engine does not seem
to be very high on their list.
The fact that the search engine companies are focusing on differentiating
themselves based largely on factors other than their usefulness or quality
as a search engine is something that normally would be indicative of a
mature industry where further innovation in the core technology is
unlikely. But I don't believe that this is the case -- there is clearly a
lot of room left for improving how online search engines work. This opens
the door to new competitors coming in and displacing the current players.
The barriers to entry will be very high, to be sure, but not impossible,
particularly after the false economy created by the IPOs collapses and some
of these companies start to have to operate under limited resources.
For another perspective on this issue, see James Houck's great column:
Classic Battle Strategy Revisited: The Marketing General Evaluates
the Search Engines
http://www.clickz.com/archives/033098.html
--Cliff
Cliff Kurtzman
President and CEO
The Tenagra Corporation
http://www.tenagra.com/
281/480-6300
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