Importance of competitive search market

Michael Arrington has an excellent post on Techcrunch on the often asked question - "Is the search war over?"

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/25/the-importance-of-a-competitive-search-market/

I think innovation in search is far from over. We are just beginning to see some good ideas being implemented in semantic search, social search, deep web, and search results visualization areas. The gap in quality of organic results is not that wide between Google and Yahoo offerings. However, Google’s brand and its monetization of queries is way ahead of the competitors. But despite its best efforts to date, Google has not been able to tranform its leadership in PC Internet search over to mobile internet search, which has different dynamics. Yahoo and MS will do best to keep the pace of innovation high to neutralize Google’s lead in PC search while trying to establish themselves as legit alternatives in mobile space. You only have to look at what’s happening in mobile advanced worlds such as Korea and JP to understand how Yahoo and MS can use mobile disruption to get back in search game.

I think MS has done a good job with Live Search Cash Back scheme. It is a classic case of trying to dislodge a leader by redefining the rules of the game. Google has a lock on CPC based search advertising and is seemingly very hard to dislodge. By offering CPA model alongwith cash back lure for consumers, I believe MS will be able to gain good traction with advertisers as well as consumers. Rolling this out to mass market adsense segment will be even better. I bet they are already working on that.

Starting Up

The pace of innovation in internet software space is outright crazy. There is so much stimuli one gets everyday reading a variety of news articles and blogs. This blog is to capture my thoughts on some of the latest and most promising trends that I come across. I don't know what the frequency of my posts will be, but I will strive towards posting at least once a week.

While the world is moving over to microblogging (thanks to twitter), I thought it is a good time to at least try out creating a blog.