Business Insight Zone

The other day I adverted to Robert Scoble’s video takes on the future of Google. The short version of Scoble’s take: a convergence of other competitors (Mahalo, Facebook, et al.) could spell trouble for the online search giant.

Now, I’ve met Scoble in person and corresponded with him by e-mail, and he’s never been anything but super-nice to me. He comes across as super-nice in his videos. But he sure knows how to stir the pot, as his own follow-up post reveals:

“Scoble can’t be more wrong”

To his credit, he seems pretty scrupulous in pointing out views that differ from his own.

For another take on why Scoble may be off-base about the world of online search, see this analysis from Dan Farber at ZDnet:

Scoble’s summer movie doesn’t kick Google’s butt

As I see it, there are at least three high-level issues worth addressing:

1. Online search could end up being less about the type of technology than we think. Mind you, there’s no question that algorithmic filters versus human filters is an important nut to crack. But we could see many different variants on these themes, including as-yet-undreamed combinations of the two — with or without other technologies we don’t yet think to insert into this conversation. So to pass a verdict on the innate or permanent superiority of algorithms OR humans to filter and group Internet pages may simply be shortsighted.

2. For Google to allow others to overrun its search stronghold, it would have to stop doing what it’s done so well throughout its corporate lifespan, i.e. adapting and evolving in response to changes in the market/Internet, drawing on the weapons-grade brainpower of its staff. I know three people who have hired on at Google in the past couple of years, and each of them is handily within the top 1% of the smartest folks I’ve ever known. From that side of the coin, it’s highly unlikely that Google will allow its market position to crumble. The other side of the coin is that Google has been growing very, very quickly; it still draws the lion’s share of its revenue from a single source; and it dominates a market that is still in its infancy. If there were a time for Google to stumble, that time — with its window of opportunity for Google’s competitors — would likely be coming now (or soon).

3. Most households in the US don’t demonstrate slavish devotion to a single make of car, a single brand of electronics, or a single grocery store chain. I use Firefox for most things but Internet Explorer for some specific things, and in fact my work setup is more useful to me because I use both. I use Microsoft Word for most writing, but I’m using Notepad as I write this because it keeps the formatting from screwing up when I paste the text into the Wordpress composition window. Depending on where I’m traveling, I like to fly Southwest, Frontier, Continental, or British Airways. And so on. There’s very little friction for users if they decide they want to use Google for some things and Mahalo for others, and the fact that today most people use just one search engine (Google, usually) for everything doesn’t imply that this sort of behavior will still prevail five or ten years from now.

(As a counterpoint to my last observation, though, note Dave Winer’s comparison of a search engine to the OS on a computer.)

Category: Internet