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Look Out MSN Search, Here Comes Gbrowserby Mark Daoust
It is official, the search engine wars are in full swing. On Tuesday, February
01, 2005 MSN officially rolled out its new search solution to all of its
websites, including MSN.com. This comes on the heels of growing speculation that
Google plans to launch its own browser, possibly in an attempt to attack
Microsoft’s greatest strength in Internet Explorer. Is it possible that MSN
actually rolled out their search engine to prevent Google from doing the same
thing they did to Yahoo! with the release of Gmail?
Google appears to
have been planning a browser for some time. In April of 2004 they purchased the
domain gbrowser.com (notice the similarity to gmail.com) and recently they lured
two of the lead developers on the Firefox browser project to join the Google
team. When asked what their role would be at Google, both developers were unable
to specify what their roles were. Yet with Firefox’s relative success at
chipping away Internet Explorer’s stronghold on the browser market, Google is
certain to take notice of the minds that were able to make a dent in the
Internet Explorer stronghold.
Google Has a History of Attacking
Strengths
The common thought when considering an attack on a competitor
is to attack their weaknesses. Google, true to their history of bucking
tradition, has a history of doing just the opposite. Rather than attacking their
potential competitor’s strengths, Google identifies its competitor’s strengths
and attacks those strengths directly. This is exactly what they did when they
launched Gmail.
Before the launch of Gmail, the search engine wars were
being anticipated by the SEO community. Yahoo! had acquired Overture and Inktomi
and had announced its plans to abandon the Google search results. Similarly, MSN
had announced that they too would be leaving Google’s search results and would
develop their own internal search technology. Both Yahoo! and MSN posed a real
threat to steal a significant portion of Google’s search market. However, at the
time, Yahoo! proved to be the more imminent threat as they would go to market
with a proven search technology in Inktomi and an established advertising
network with Overture.
Yahoo!’s real strength in attacking Google was the
draw that their portal had. The tool that offered Yahoo! the most certain return
traffic was Yahoo! Mail. Although Yahoo! has several different tools that bring
users back time and time again, nothing was as powerful as their email system.
As people came back to Yahoo! to use their e-mail, or other tools for that
matter, the hope was that they would grow to become loyal to Yahoo!’s search
results as well.
Google realized the strength of Yahoo! Mail, so they
launched Gmail as an offensive on Yahoo!’s greatest strength. At the time Google
launched Gmail, they were offering 10 times the amount of space, an obvious
attempt to gain press and increase the desirability of Gmail.
MSN Search
Provides a Bigger Threat
Although MSN Search currently holds a smaller
share of the search engine market than Yahoo! or Google, they are actually the
bigger threat to Yahoo!. Yahoo! had the ability to push their search results to
the millions of people who come to their portal to use their tools. If Google is
able to provide users with the same tools that they find at Yahoo!, users no
longer have a reason to visit Yahoo!. However, any computer user who is using
Windows most likely will use Internet Explorer, even if it is to eventually
download an alternate browser, and we all know that most people are comfortable
enough with Internet Explorer to not even look for an
alternative.
Because MSN has the constant attention of consumers through
Internet Explorer, they have many more channels to push their search results
through. Do not be surprised if the next version of Internet Explorer comes with
a search bar included as well as more redirects to MSN search results when a bad
address is typed in the address bar. As long as MSN has such a strong majority
of the browser market they will be able to push their search results.
MSN
also has the advantage of developing a new search technology. Yahoo! entered the
search engine battles using technology that web searches had been using for
years in Inktomi. The problem is that users had already used Inktomi search
results and had chosen Google instead. Although Yahoo! made changes to the
algorithm that powered Inktomi’s results, the changes were not significant
enough to make a strong distinction from Google’s search results. Whether the
MSN results will be of a significantly higher quality than Google is yet to be
seen, but by developing a new search technology, MSN has the ability to provide
users with significantly different results than Google.
Google Will Need
To Duplicate Gmail with Gbrowser
With MSN’s search becoming the latest
threat to Google’s search market stronghold, Google will once again attack its
competitor’s strength. Internet Explorer has recently shown some weakness in
losing market share to Firefox, and it appears as if Google is ready to attempt
to bring down MSN’s greatest strength.
If Google hopes to have any
success in bringing down Internet Explorer, they will need to duplicate the
success of the Gmail campaign. When launching Gmail, Google knew that they would
make little to no impact on Yahoo! if they were to simply offer an e-mail
program that was open to the general public. What reason would a person have to
join Gmail if they had a perfectly fine email account at Yahoo!? An open launch
to the general public would result in an initial influx of new users, many of
which would be curiosity seekers who would quickly forget about their new,
secondary email accounts.
Instead of launching an open campaign to invite
the general public to participate in Gmail, Google chose to employ a viral
marketing campaign of six degrees of separation. No single person had the
ability to get a Gmail account unless they knew someone who was permitted to
extend an invitation. People who had an account, and who in turn were allowed to
give away six invitations to others to join Gmail became Gmail’s primary
advertisers. A feeling of exclusivity became quickly associated with having a
Gmail account, and soon message boards were filled with people offering just six
accounts that they were able to give away. The effect is a brilliant example of
just how effective Gmail can be. Gmail did not and will not become the most
popular e-mail program in a short time span, but over time the six degrees of
separation will make Gmail the most popular email system available (if you know
someone).
If Google wants to be at all effective in dethroning Internet
Explorer, they will have to reach into their bag of tricks once again to make
Gbrowser an option that carries the same desirability that Gmail carried. Google
can certainly count on the Microsoft haters to give their browser a spin, but in
order to get the audience that really matters, the vast majority of Internet
users, Google will need to extend a personal invitation.
MSN Must Act
Quickly
Now that MSN has launched their search results, they will need to
act quickly to protect against Google making any serious impact on their browser
market. MSN has already done several things right. They are the first of the
major search engines to offer their search results in an RSS format, opening up
their results to all webmasters. They also offer Encarta answers to search
results, provide music searches, feed discovery, definitions, provide math
calculations, news search, and other features that are becoming increasingly
important to offer.
However, MSN has not yet launched its own sponsored
links program. Although this is certainly a program in the making, MSN will need
to launch this service as soon as possible if they want to compete with Google
and Yahoo! on every level.
But more importantly, Microsoft will need to
have a new version of Internet Explorer available to launch once Gbrowser makes
its debut. Yahoo! successfully dampened the blow of Gmail by matching the
increased storage space that Google came out with. If Microsoft wants to keep
its browser market share safe when Google launches Gbrowser, it will be
important that they answer Gbrowser with a competitive product.
It Is
All Very Welcome
The search engine wars are all very welcome. The results
of the search engine wars have been nothing but positive so far. The launch of
Gmail provided users with significantly increased storage for email. Yahoo! has
improved their search results and Google is continuing to try and improve their
search results. If Google launches a new browser it will no doubt offer new
options that will only help users organize and find information.
The
search engine wars have become much more than a war for the attention of
Internet searchers. Because Yahoo! and MSN entered the search market hoping
their strengths would provide them with the necessary momentum to topple Google,
Google has brought the battle to Yahoo! and MSN. The search engine war is now
the war of vying for Internet user’s attention through search, email, browsers,
news aggregation, etc.
No matter how the search engine wars turn out,
the people who will ultimately benefit will be Internet users…and the
shareholders of the winning company
About the Author
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site
Reference. This is a link to the original article: Look Out MSN
Search, Here Comes Gbrowser
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