I won’t even address the fact that it would be nice for one of these articles to actually include MetaMojo.com in the vertical search OR people power categories… forget that, that’s my pride speaking. Though I would like to stress that MetaMojo.com is a bigger vertical search player than many of the ones listed in that or other post. I’d also stress that MetaMojo.com can overnight become a social search contestant but we don’t think that social search will be anything other than a spam magnet for now.
But… another day goes by when another site publishes a “who will beat Google in search” article.
Let me be clear on this: no company will ever displace Google in search. That race is over. Yes, I am familiar with Altavista, Yahoo! etc., but there is one major difference in the debate:
Monetization of search.
When Altavista gave up on search, it did so because the money was in impressions and portaldom, and not search. Today Google commands nearly 50% market share in the most lucrative space of all of online advertising. One out of every four dollar spent on online advertising is spent through Google.
To further stress why no one will beat Google, consider this: most of the wanna be Google challengers probably turn to Google to monetize their search. As such, to argue that anyone will displace Google shows a lack of common sense.
The best bet - MetaMojo.com’s included - for search startups is to find complementary niches to help make search better. Or to find a way to have a search component in their respective networks, like MetaMojo.com fits in the Mojo Supreme network of sites. We have contextual, vertical, or niche properties, and vertical search is a good fit in our network.
The best bet for established search players (MSN, Yahoo!, Ask, AOL) is to fight for #2.
The fight for #1 in search has long been over. 2006 saw Google build its lead over Yahoo!, had Yahoo! shrunk the lead, it would be a different matter. Unfortunately, no one will beat Google in search, never.
Disclosure: I own YHOO
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