Breaking the Google habit
Cuil, the new and "improved" search engine created by Google veterans, has failed abysmally to make a dent against its alma mater, Google, according to TechCrunch. Clearly something other than a full-frontal assault is going to be needed to displace Google as the search leader.
(Credit:
ComScore)
But why is Google the search leader?
Tim O'Reilly points to Google PageRank as the "Google's breakthrough in search" that "quickly made it the undisputed search market leader." Maybe, but consumers don't think that way. My parents' use of Google actually has little to nothing to do with the quality of the search.
I'm not sure any of ours does, ultimately. I've spent the last two days tinkering with searches on Microsoft Live Search, Google, and Yahoo, and on a pure quality basis it's hard to tell the three apart. I'm sure some objective science could be made of Google's superiority, but that's not how people search. If you're looking for "table salt" on Google, how do you know that the results returned are better than those on Yahoo? Answer: you don't.
In fact, the times that I can't find something with a search engine have much more to do with the quality of my search terms than with the quality of the algorithms informing the search, and no search engine really helps much with prodding quality search terms. How could they?
Ultimately, then, I think we use Google out of habit, not superior search. For most of us, it's the search engine to which our trusted computer adviser pointed us, and we've never looked back. Why would we? Because we don't have any way of independently verifying that a competitor would give us better search results, there really is no justification for switching.
So, Google is a habit. But it's not one that Google is willing to lackadaisically take for granted. Instead, it is building all sorts of ancillary value (Gmail, Picasa, etc.) which by themselves provide little add-on revenue opportunity but ensure that when we search, we never have reason to look beyond Google, its cash cow.
All of which means that much as Google has learned from the disruptive Web, it has perhaps learned more from the desktop. Microsoft, king of the desktop, makes comparatively little from its businesses outside of Windows and Office, but all the add-on value ensures that the vast majority keep feeding its cash cows to the tune of billions in profits every quarter. Microsoft is a habit, too. People could fairly easily switch to Linux and OpenOffice, but they don't. The bother of change doesn't outweigh the ease of habit.
The only way to displace Google in search may well be to follow Apple's approach to displacing Microsoft on the desktop: change the game. Apple turned the desktop business into a creative/entertainment pursuit, blending the desktop (iLife suite of products, plus extensions of the desktop like the iPhone and iPod) with the cloud (iTunes, App Store). Apple has a long way to go, but it's taking market share from Microsoft at a respectable clip.
In other words, for competitors looking to kick the Google search habit, you can't take the Cuil route and compete on search. It just won't matter if you're better. You need to create a different, compelling habit.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Live has improved so much over the past year that I've abandonded Yahoo and never find a need to use Google. They have on-par search results, better image searches, better maps and frankly the interface with the daily image is a beautiful alternative to the same old "GOOGLE" on a white background.
Step 1: Change your default search to live.com
Step 2: learn the habit of just typing "live" then Ctrl-Enter in your address bar.
I'm a researcher, so naturally I typed in some technical terms that were familiar to me. Some searches got me less than a dozen returns, most of which were outdated or not quite salient. In contrast, Google gave me plenty of relevant hits, although I did have to sift through quite a few useless ones. If I wanted research publications on those same topics, there is always Google Scholar. Unless things have changed dramatically in the last few months, there simply is no comparison between Google and Live Search.
I told my sister about that experience and she sheepishly admitted she was aware that Live Search still needed a bit of work, especially when it comes to specialised or arcane subjects. Then, she dropped a bombshell. She quietly told me that most of her colleagues at work use Google. I couldn't quite believe Microsoft would allow such a thing, but she said that employees were allowed to use whatever tools they found to be most effective. In fact, after using Google, she would type the identical search terms into Live Search hoping to help its "learning" process. If that is not a damning indictment of the performance of Live Search, I don't know what is.
Disclaimer: I have never worked for Google or MIcrosoft at any time, and I don't have any close friends or immediate family who are current employees or either company. Furthermore, I have never owned any of stocks of either company.
For one, I love that disclaimer. Furthermore, I also love Google Scholar, even though I don't know how many other people use it. That is a great "made up" story (riiight, no sister). Indeed, Live speaks for itself.
Honestly, the big reason folks use Google has nothing to do with habit per se, but because it does have the features that make it useful, and does so without bombarding you with imagery, silverlight/flash, or any of that other crap that gets in the way.
A year or so ago, I tried Yahoo and Live, Live was abysmal. Yahoo was better, but still not what I was searching for. Shortly after Cuil 'debuted', I tried it, and not only did I not personally care for the method, but it didn't give results I was interested in.
Today, well, I haven't tried Cuil, I haven't tried Live, nor have I tried Yahoo, but that is because Google does what I need, does it well, and does it fast. Also, Google as a company has a sense of humor (which others seem to lack) and tries to push forward (unlike Microsoft). Yahoo, while I like many of their services, they seem more to be just a company to me, a bit impersonal, whereas Google seems more personal... and that is not addressing the privacy claims of various groups.
So, for me it is because Google works and their image in my mind is a good jovial but professional one. Microsoft has the image(s) from past decades, and yahoo has failed to develop more than an image of a company to me.
The thing is, Google came out with a few other products that complement their search and made it all work together (like gmail, picasa, maps, etc) and put it all in one place. Before, I would have to go to mapquest for maps, personal e-mail for my e-mails, navigate through files on my PC using explorer and search using Yahoo (I never cared for MS search).
To integrate all that, and still keep the clean theme and the quality of search results is what keeps me a loyal google user. I like the innovation and the forward thinking. I like the simple page that is not cluttered with too much text. I like the fact that I can customize it to make it relevant for me (igoogle).
I think that is the reason why its not out of habit that people use google, its out of convenience. I want to find what I am looking for, google conveniently delivers it and does a better job than the other guys.
Compare http://duckduckgo.com/?q=matt+asay with http://www.google.com/search?q=matt+asay and you'll see how "less is more" favors the former. Maybe not always, but often enough that I switched.
You're right that no one is going to succeed by trying to be more Googley than Google. My own version of this: http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/08/05/is-google-good-enough/
Instead, we have to follow Apple's example and think different: http://thenoisychannel.com/2008/08/07/where-google-isnt-good-enough/
I'm not saying suggesting that Duck Duck Go is a Google killer. It's a one-person effort that, from my perspective, just scratches the surface. But I do feel it is a step in the right direction. Complacency is a powerful force, and it doesn't help that most of the efforts to beat Google are uncreative attempts to beat it on its own turf.
As for Apple, you make valid points about its flaws. But it's hard to dispute their success. My point was that they've often succeeded by defying the status quo, rather than just pursuing incremental improvements. To be clear, most people who "think different" are simply cranks. Differentiation is a necessary condition for innovation, but hardly a sufficient one. You still have to create value.
But Yahoo's home page is so cluttered and there is no way to use three columns. And there aren't as many gadgets because there is development for Google Desktop contributing to Google's. And you can't have chat on your home page. I suppose this could all be personal preference, but I can fully access my Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps, etc. all from my homepage. That's what I really want.
But search is really the key to why Google leads. When, for example, I type [NfL], each search engine comes up with search suggestions. MSN's first suggestions: [nfl], [nfl network], and [nfl playoff scenarios]. Well, the first choice is simply annoying, as it makes arrow-keying down to any of the other options one more push longer. I don't normally search for the [nfl network] online, simply because if I were an avid user of that, I would simply go to "nfl.com" in the address bar and not search for it. I am not sure how often I would actually look for this online, when I could just look at team stats and know which ones have a chance or talk about it with others. I must admit, however, that I do not watch football as much as some, so perhaps others do search for this. Yahoo comes up with more relevant suggestions, the top three of which are [nfl draft], [nfl scores], and [nfl rumors]. The first is irrelevant this late in the season, but some may be late to the season or some rare occurrence such as being out of the country until now. The next choice, [nfl scores] is actually what I search for most often, because when I'm looking online, I usually look for a game that I recently missed. The last, [nfl rumors], is a bit absurd, because not many people actually set out to find unconfirmed news, but that may also just be a personal weariness. Google's top three, however, are all relevant: [nfl scores], [nfl schedule], and [nfl standings]. After looking for a recently-played game's outcome, I next-to-most-often look for who is playing if it is a Sunday. After that, I usually see how the teams are doing (whether or not the titans have lost and how high the Chargers' losing streak is up to, although finally broken). Therefore, Google seems to have the most relevant search results. Certainly, this is only one search term, and others may produce more relevant suggestions on MSN and Yahoo than Google, but it is nearly always relevant on Google.
In addition to the less used feature of suggestions, the actual results are quite important. MSN returns nfl.com and a link to msn's NFL channel, and then scores for several recent games. Indeed the last is quite useful, and the first is also probably what the search should return, but the second is useless. Yahoo gives a link to the website, a link to the scores section, and a Yahoo sports page. Decent, but not as good as MSN's "scores" section. Google has the score of only the last game, but includes the next scheduled game and puts this first so that the less relevant nfl.com will be clicked less readily (because, as previously stated, it would be more simple to type [nfl.com] into the address bar).
This page is cluttered on MSN and Yahoo's pages by written-out suggestions for both, and centering and a very thick header respectively. Google is clean.
A good point is brought up, however, that Google has a huge amount of online utilities and software. Certainly, Microsoft has Word, but it has a new and counter-intuitive interface. Yahoo has flikr and Yahoo Answers, both of which are useful. Google, to reference the services I use most often, has Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, YouTube, Chrome, Picasa, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google OS (hopefully). I also have to mention that the search extras, such as movie showtimes, are better on Google than anywhere else, if anyone else has them. SearchWiki is cool, too.
And I agree with hawkeyeaz1 that Google's image is important as well.
Google is the best in every search-related aspect, and their additional products are highly useful and reliable.
This is why Google has over 60% of the search share and is simply the best. Oh, and awesome.
It provides the suggestion services from all the major providers, makes a great homepage, demo, and tool for the parents.
All in all though, this discussion is pointless because one can easily chose between the best of these at will and without cost.
Cnet has reviewed them before (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10114454-2.html?tag=mncol) and when I teach my basic web search class that is the primary site we use rather than Google.
BOB
get over yourself.
- by CharlesSKnight January 1, 2009 8:05 AM PST
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(42 Comments)Stop by the blog with all of the alternatives, the alternative search engines - hundreds of them!
www.AltSearchEngines.com