The Google hammer
Posted
Oct 09 2007, 12:46 PM
by
Matt Koppenheffer
What would it take for me to stop using Google?
That's the question I was asking myself this morning after reading through articles from RedHerring and Business Week. Google has shown that search is big business, and number two Yahoo!, along with Microsoft and IAC/InterActiveCorp want a bigger piece.
When it comes to regular Google users like me (I hear there are a lot of us), the question for the rest of these companies is how they're going to lure us away to their search engines. While Google doesn't have the same kind of stickiness that, say, Microsoft does in desktop software, I think snagging Google users could be just as tough.
The way that Google garnered so much popularity to begin with was by realizing that web search is a hammer. You don't need a hammer to look really pretty or have all sorts of bells and whistles, you just need it to be really darn good at hammering in nails. So while all the other search providers were worrying about how to make the hammer's handle look pretty or put strobe lights on the head, Google was focusing on making sure that its hammer was really good at hammering in nails.
Now over the past few years, Google has made itself stickier by offering other services such as email and blogging, but these were built on a similar principle -- functionality.
Being good students of what has worked for the competition, the recent redesigns (such as Ask.com) of the other search engines look a heck of a lot like Google's. That's probably a good start, but hardly enough to get users to decide to try out one of these competitors' search engines, let alone switch for good. After all, most people aren't going to spontaneously decide that, though their current hammer is in perfect working order, they're going to head to Home Depot and pick up a brand new one just for a change.
So for those chasing Google, the challenge is to either figure out how to sell people on a new hammer, or else come up with an entirely new, and more effective, tool for the job.
(Full disclosure: I do not have a financial position in any of the companies mentioned.)
