How to Compete With Google

Google, from its humble origins at Menlo Park, California in 1998, has become the world's leading search engine. Formed by Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, Google now boasts assets in excess of $30 billion and a net yearly income of more than four billion dollars. Google is recognised as the most powerful brand in the world. The number two and three players in the search engine stakes, Yahoo and Microsoft, are so far behind the game that even the failed proposal to merge their search businesses would have made little difference to Google's global domination. Any attempt to compete with the Mountain View based behemoth would seem to be dead in the water.

Google, because of its global position which brings in all those billions in advertising, is not without its detractors. The main issue web users have with Google is its desire to track our web surfing habits. Google claims that it wants to offer us appropriate web adverts based on our known search behaviour. Google's opponents counter that such observation compromises the privacy of the individual. Despite Google's apparent hegemony in the search industry, there are a number of smaller companies who are aiming to beat Google in specialised niches. Nitin Karandikar, in his blog post, "Top 17 Search Innovations outside of Google" explores the work being undertaken by potential competitors to Google. In his commentary on Karandikar's post, Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft's Emerging Business Team, cites three sectors as promising:

* Natural Language Processing
* Local Search
* Cell (Mobile in the UK) Phone Voice Search

Natural Language Processing (NLP - not to be confused with neuro-linguistic programming), or Semantic Search, has long been touted as the future of search. Conventional search is based on the actual main words used in the search query. Google ignores conjunctions such as the, what, and, in, how. NLP aims to answer the search query in the context of human language. NLP has largely failed because most people, when searching, only type in one or two words. Local Search is coming to the fore on mobile devices such as smart phones. GPS enabled devices can detect the geographical location of the user and can promote nearby businesses when a search for a restaurant or hairdresser, for example, is entered.

Don Dodge identifies a major failing in local search when he reveals that 50% of businesses do not have a website. For local search to have any real value, it must be able to access all local businesses. This is a clear argument for those business owners without websites to act swiftly or penalise themselves. Local search is clearly a major growth opportunity. Mobile phone voice search offers the greatest opportunity to Google's competitors . The concept has a number of mountains to climb, such as the difficulty in providing a good voice recognition application for mobile phones. There is also the challenge of displaying clear results on the phone screen.

With mobile technology advancing at an incredible rate, this surely is a very promising sector for would be Pages and Brinns. In conclusion, it is clear that Google will not allow its competitors to just walk away with the market for any of the above search marketing innovations. It will at least develop bigger and better applications, if not buy out any upstart startup business that dares to try something new in search. The entrepreneur, though, has the advantage of scale, small scale that is, as opposed to the need for Google to develop the massive support systems necessary to service the second biggest startup in the world.