Mknac’s Weblog


Are you a Google or a Yahoo?

The Search; How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture” by John Battelle is a book that provides a fascinating look into how Google became the largest media company in the world today. Battelle also provides insights into how search engines work and the differences between major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and many others.

“The Search” uses numerous examples of people, companies and events that have been transformed along with Google’s rise to the top of the search engine pile. Ultimately the search engine battle I feel boils down to two issues. Which companies can better develop a business model to generate revenue from searches and which companies can provide search results that are closer to your intent.

I’ve always been a Yahoo person myself as my experience is that I’m able to more easily find what I’m looking for on Yahoo rather than Google. Could people be predisposed to a search engine because its algorithms more closely approximate your thinking? Based on the statistics I guess I’m in the minority on this issue as more people use Google than any other search engine. Based on revenue, Google has developed a business model that’s clearly out producing its competitors.

The amount of services that Google provides is incredible. Just to think that a few years ago many of these services that we now rely upon every day didn’t exist. Google is mining our digital clickstream to develop services that they want to provide all covered with ad producing revenue.

Google has certainly achieved many remarkable goals and provided convenient and useful services and programs to its users. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad to have so much market power and information in the hands of one company. Could you argue that Google is a monopoly? I don’t think you’d win that argument at this point.

Although Google may have a “do no evil” ideology they certainly have done evil; whether it was intentional or on purpose is debatable. The old saying “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” might be of value here.

Why do we trust Google with this much information about us and control over that information? Is it a matter of time before the ideology of “do no evil” is absolutely corrupted? Only time will tell if Google is able to maintain the trust it has built with its users.

