There’s a turf war brewing on the Internet as Google, Microsoft and Twitter duke it out for your attention. This battle is playing itself out in the technosphere and Google is likely to win the war, but never underestimate the underdogs.
Shifts on the Internet fault-line happen quickly.
In the past few months, Google has seen plenty of competition in a volley of new services.
This year, Twitter has become a trend-setter for real-time search and last month, Microsoft launched a serious contender with Bing.
To add insult to injury Yahoo finally gave up their search services, merging with Microsoft last week to potentially solidify a strategy to steal even more market share from Google.
Meanwhile, back on the Google campus they’re starting a new campaign aimed at Microsoft promoting their Google Chrome operating system, Google Wave (a collaborative email and productivity platform due this Fall) and most recently, a campaign aimed directly at Microsoft Word and Excel users – an initiative called “Going Google.”
What’s at risk here is quite simply your attention which translates into a king’s ransom of advertising dollars.
In the past decade, Google has morphed into an Internet advertising borg by giving away free services and creating the largest audience on the planet.
These services include the most popular search engine, superior web-based email and a host of other free software applications. These “freemiums” have positioned Google so they now own over 1/3 of all Internet advertising – a sum estimated at $21 billion a year.
Despite their dominance, Microsoft’s Bing offers a unique online search experience with their newly coined “Decision Engine.”
I like how they handle image and video search results and their trendy background image is only the tip of the iceberg as several new visual functions make it a novel competitor. Aside from the eye-candy, it’s going to be an expensive challenge for Gates and company to establish themselves as a verb. Even the phrase “I binged it” is hard to deliver in a world of memes.
There’s little chance Microsoft could topple Google – even with the Yahoo merger. Microsoft still has an advantage packaging Internet Explorer and Bing by default with PC Computers, but it’s still hard to break away from something as elegant and effective as Google.
Still yet, netizens are becoming aware of other Internet browsers as both Firefox and Safari continue to show respectable growth in the past year. (Firefox recently passed one billion downloads)
Locally, we are watching impressive numbers out of the box here at Times-News Online for Bing. Last month, our reports indicate Bing delivered over 23,000 visitors to our website compared to Google’s 140,000. Yahoo was strong too with over 40,000 visitors.
In spite of its popularity, Google has its strengths and weaknesses just like any software.
The Google algorithm for conducting a search on the Internet is a powerful force. A relevance-based logic, their programming has become pretty darn good at finding just what you want. I rarely use a phone book anymore as Google is right on the money with any local business search.
Google actually favors older web pages. The longer you’ve been on the web and the more links point to your website, the more popular Google ranks you in the query and therein is the chink in the armor.
If you want to know something right now and what’s being said on the street – Google isn’t the best place to search. That’s where Twitter and other social media services step in.
According to Marketing Charts, almost 70% of the US population have no idea what Twitter is. Even though they are celebrating 1928% growth over the past year, some still see Twitter as the latest buzz service for the “me-generation” while others view the service as the latest in a long line of marketing scams.
A couple of weeks ago, Twitter updated its primary home page and it reminds me of the early Google home page.
They have retooled their first impression, revamping the primary user interface with a big search field (instead of the “Join Us” battle cry).
Their search is now in the center of the page and right below it are the trending topics showing the primary topics (trending topics) that are happening right now, today and last week.
Over the past several months, I’ve watched the citizens from Iran use the medium to rally support around the world. The major news services have bowed to the new medium too – scrambling to get all of their television personalities signed up for the service.
The death of Michael Jackson brought Twitter to its knees as he crashed the service this Summer. Together with other popular search tools, most news junkies and journalists are now resorting to new services to find out what’s happening in the now.
Here in the Tri-Cities, Barack Obama’s visit to Bristol, VA last week was first reported on Twitter before any of the local media had time to publish the story.
Twitter’s new goal is to be the “watercooler of the world” and these changes seem to reflect that mission as they continue to expand their audience. This week, Twitter reports they now have over 44 million users.
Here’s an experiment for you. Visit the Twitter home page today and type in the word “Kingsport” (or any other word) and you’ll see the latest information and plenty of conversations about our hometown.
Reminds me sort of like the days of the CB radio and it’s still too early to tell if the service will follow the same path, but it’s certainly shaking up the industry.
Search engines are extremely important to our productivity in today’s connected generation. From the classroom to office – the living room to the cell phone, instant access to information is determining a new class of have and have-nots in our modern culture. (Kevin Kelly describes this in his treaty on “Digital Socialism”)
For businesses with websites, rising to the top of search engines are crucial. Especially in a global market.
It wasn’t that long ago a sign on street corner brought people to your door, but now a properly tuned website will bring people from around the planet.
A recent study indicates over 68% of all traffic to a website comes from search engines. And though it’s still important to have a well-named website (yourbusiness.com), most people find their way to your site through the back door, the basement, the windows and anywhere there’s a search result. Whether that’s Google, Bing, Wolfram Alpha, Twitter, Facebook – whatever – the more the merrier.
So carry on with the search wars. Find one you like and stick too it. As far as the competition is concerned, it can only make things better for us all.
Unfortunately, the Dewey Decimal system may become a relic of the past.