Try as they might, even with more sensible marketing instead of hype, there is only a very very small likelihood that any shiny new search engine can take on Google. And that’s because in the last couple of years, an insurmountable barrier to entry has materialized.
The barrier is perhaps not frighteningly high if we talk about “entry to the market”. Another garage firm conquering the world – that would be sooooo exciting. However, what really matters is “entry to the big league”, and, perhaps a bit counter-intuitively, that big league is insulated from newcomers by the intractable issue of webspam.
For the three major players, webspam is probably the single biggest challenge technologically. But they can take consolation from this: if something is so serious even they struggle with it, it is definitely going to be lethal to smaller fish.
Not immediately after they start out, of course. Nobody cares about new search engines in the beginning. But with growing awareness among users, spam will increase, too. Aided by automation, it will actually grow faster than awareness and renown. So any new SE will be crippled before it could reach a critical mass to pose a challenge to G.
What this means? That the age factor is not only important for domains and sites. It will be important for search engines as well. To put it simply, only those can succeed who were already on the scene before the onslaught of webspam began in earnest.
Aaron Wall said about MSN being relatively late to the party:
By the time Microsoft got in the search game the web graph was polluted with spammy and bought links.
While this may be true, they probably still arrived in time to stand at least a chance. Yahoo has an even better position in case Google trips up. For more recent entrants, the odds are extremely long.
Tags: age factor, barrier to entry, google, Microsoft, MSN, startup, webspam, Yahoo
