If you can't join 'em.......

[essdeekay]

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........beat 'em.

I know this may seem a little "far out".

I read a lot about Google dominating the internet and the effect this is having on affiliate marketing, etc.

What would it take to compete with Google?

What sort of technology would it require?

Could we, as a group, set up a search engine to equal, if not beat, G?

Anything is possible.

Simon

[DomainsUnlimited]

Simon
as Hamlet said "...that is the question..."
but bearing in mind a certain Mr B Gates and his merry men and probably every other established SE in the land and every upcoming techie is aleardy trying that very task - I doubt we could - not withstanding the wealth of knowledgable and talented people that post on this very forum. G has grown so fast so soon in so many diverse areas, most notably, now Google Base entering the classifed marketplace (the bread and butter of newspapers and magazines) this is a double whammy for them, as G has already put in place plans to show all published news, reviews and books without syndication licence fees, a major add-on revenue stream to their advertising and purchase sales revenues. They in turn, have seen the importance of the internet and started buying esgablsihed websites to add to their publishing empires (Time Inc bought Golf.com, NewsCorp owner of The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The News of The World, BSkyB, Harper Collins, 20th Century Fox etc has bought up myplace.com and propertyfinder.com and others in a $1bn spending spree; Daily Mail Group bought PrimeLocation.com and is looking to buy CarSource.co.uk, GuardianMedia group is looking to sell AutoTrader.co.uk....

Now someone in the forum will shoot me down in flames and say "as it happens I am working on a little project at the moment.."

[drivetowin]

At a rough guess I would say don't even think about it unless you've got £100 million to throw at it

It's not just the technology, it's all the marketing you would need to do to get even 10% of surfers to use it.

[Green2K]

........beat 'em.

I know this may seem a little "far out".

...

Anything is possible.

Simon

Not true, many things are impossible and if not, entirely impractical. Including this.

Green2K

[stevebrowne]

Not really. When Google started, no-one thought that Yahoo and Altavista woudl be going anywhere. When IE came along, who believed that Netscape would die? Things do chnage. There is a backlash against Google owning everything, so some people, a growing number of clued up people, will actively avoid google properties.

Obviously in our game, we can't ignor ethem, but it doesn't mean that they will be here forever.

What can beat them? Who knows? It hasn't been thought of yet.

[drivetowin]

Its certainly not impossible, Google was formed by wise men coming together and no doubt whatever surpasses Google in time will come the same way.

But...........the barriers to entry are higher now than they were when Google started so any successor will need not only a bright idea but deep pockets too.

[lowndsy]

There are already search algorithms which people think are better than Google, so who knows. Also the technology which made Google possible was the ability to link lots of cheap computers together to create a budget supercomputer, so the techy side is possible, and Google itself rose to fame on the grounds of a weird name and a feeling of taking the big boys on, so why shouldn't someone else replicate it?

[thadeas]

Hi,

My opinion is that google cant be beaten at the moment, same as microsoft cant be beaten for software, but the marketplace is big and as a community of internet users we should help the smaller guys, so lets not only use the big players but give a hand to the up and commings!

aswell as Google try using Mirago or Splut
aswell as eBay try using eBid or CQOut
aswell as Microsoft Windows try using Linux

Im sure there are others but you get the idea.

<hr>
Thadeas Westlake

Who's hungry : www.kebabguide.co.uk

[speeddate]

Perhaps if everyone on the forum donated all of their traffic and skills to one .com joint site then perhaps there would be a chance of starting something.

[pricethat]

I been working on an adserving block for about 3 years now, its not so far as a pipe dream as you might expect but i still think it needs another year before it could possibly work.

I agree with Keith there is no way you would get anything off the ground of any size without at least 100 million and even then its nothing to google to spend twice as much to shut you back down again.

My idea was to use the adserver (very overture type setup) for affiliates and agencies and keep the merchants out. I dont think getting reach is so much a of a problem as affiliates themselves could and would use the results on their pages. To be honest a lot of the sales i actually make come from overture and espotting results that have been served on an affiliates pages.

By keeping the merchants out it gives affiliates an exclusive ppc channel that isnt open to merchants unless they join an affiliate scheme. I think its a niche that would get some support but even then i wouldnt even contemplate it without setting up a shareholding company with some bigger minds when it comes to business than me.

As it stands its redundant until i get on and finish this never ending price comparison site The contextual adserver was an absolute peice of cake compared to price comparison.