"Surely Google Won't Also Want to Own Every Single Search Vertical ?"
Vertical search has always been one way of niching/avoiding The GOOG monster. So RedEyeVC has a very nice rap-up (from a VC's perspective) about what google is doing with its OneBox vertical search feature and how startups need to avoid competing on a keyword:keyword basis with Google.
RedEyeVC : "I think that vertical search engines can still succeed if they offer additional application-specific features/navigation that differ from traditional search-box functionality (like Krugle) or if they focus on syndicating their results across other sites (like Biggerboat). But Google's actions have real consequences for vertical search engines -- and I'm surprised that there has been more discussion around Google Co-op than Google OneBox. By implicitly determining a user's intent, Google is able to take standard queries and filter them to their vertically focused sub-sites. Am I missing something or does this have real impact on the vertical search space?"
It seems once a service has critical mass of unique/exclusive content, a strong community, and other 'proprietary' tools which make the service 'more than just search' - then startups have a chance. If there is one thing google hasnt done well (in addition to 'owning' verticals) it's in the glue that connects its services together. You cant search really in greader, you cant use blogspot in a clipmark way from a google search result, and if you find a airfare/property/car you want to "save", store, or use in someway, google doesn't help with that.
Google is a search engine with a keyword/contextual self service ad platform, with some web based office/productivity tools, an email service, and other cellbased originated independent products (which run across a few main programming languages, and what Herr Schmidt calls a supercomputer approach !!! - a nice business if u can get it) Will it replace car dealers, realtors, travel agents and the intermediaries that aggregate these "dumb" listings and provide (supposedly) a smarter consolidated search and other "empowering" consumer and selling tools. That often aim to solve specific economic problems in specific verticals.
If you end up being the type of service that google aggregates in its one box (or similar to how citysearch aggregate yelp) then that is a good sign, that you may not be approaching head-on competition with google, but rather sumo-leverage their traffic for your own economic gain, while they sell adwords against your scraped data.
Searching and finding is usually only the first step in what people are trying to do on the web. They want to subscribe, track, compare, clip, blog, buy and share with others. Google isn't omnipotent in the verticals, and if you can own the non search consumer glue around what people are looking for, that should only accelerate. Until google starts buying the vertical search leaders, anyway.
They do have an unlimited budget when it comes to such purchases. They could buy alot in the $25m-$250m (up to $500) in designated verticals. (travel, real estate, employment, shopping etc) Which is I guess back to the whole RedEyeVC blog post question - Can VC funded players get under the radar and build something of value before being chewedup, purchased or competed against and digested. We're all hoping so and verticals definitely have their own flavour, unique criteria for success outside pagerank/adsense...
RedEyeVC : "I think that vertical search engines can still succeed if they offer additional application-specific features/navigation that differ from traditional search-box functionality (like Krugle) or if they focus on syndicating their results across other sites (like Biggerboat). But Google's actions have real consequences for vertical search engines -- and I'm surprised that there has been more discussion around Google Co-op than Google OneBox. By implicitly determining a user's intent, Google is able to take standard queries and filter them to their vertically focused sub-sites. Am I missing something or does this have real impact on the vertical search space?"
It seems once a service has critical mass of unique/exclusive content, a strong community, and other 'proprietary' tools which make the service 'more than just search' - then startups have a chance. If there is one thing google hasnt done well (in addition to 'owning' verticals) it's in the glue that connects its services together. You cant search really in greader, you cant use blogspot in a clipmark way from a google search result, and if you find a airfare/property/car you want to "save", store, or use in someway, google doesn't help with that.
Google is a search engine with a keyword/contextual self service ad platform, with some web based office/productivity tools, an email service, and other cellbased originated independent products (which run across a few main programming languages, and what Herr Schmidt calls a supercomputer approach !!! - a nice business if u can get it) Will it replace car dealers, realtors, travel agents and the intermediaries that aggregate these "dumb" listings and provide (supposedly) a smarter consolidated search and other "empowering" consumer and selling tools. That often aim to solve specific economic problems in specific verticals.
If you end up being the type of service that google aggregates in its one box (or similar to how citysearch aggregate yelp) then that is a good sign, that you may not be approaching head-on competition with google, but rather sumo-leverage their traffic for your own economic gain, while they sell adwords against your scraped data.
Searching and finding is usually only the first step in what people are trying to do on the web. They want to subscribe, track, compare, clip, blog, buy and share with others. Google isn't omnipotent in the verticals, and if you can own the non search consumer glue around what people are looking for, that should only accelerate. Until google starts buying the vertical search leaders, anyway.
They do have an unlimited budget when it comes to such purchases. They could buy alot in the $25m-$250m (up to $500) in designated verticals. (travel, real estate, employment, shopping etc) Which is I guess back to the whole RedEyeVC blog post question - Can VC funded players get under the radar and build something of value before being chewedup, purchased or competed against and digested. We're all hoping so and verticals definitely have their own flavour, unique criteria for success outside pagerank/adsense...
posted by redbarren at 4:08 PM
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