Giant slayers
2009-06-12 11:22
One of the most annoying tendencies of us internet industry commentators is to label any new technology an "(insert brand name here) killer". Currently our favourite target is that monolith of search, Google. But not only are we repeatedly wrong, I think we're looking in all the wrong places.
Last year the web was all aflutter about a new search engine called Cuil. It seemed to have everything needed to challenge the giant. It claimed to have the largest index of sites in the world and was started by heretical Google geeks who had jumped ship to out-Google their old mates.
Cuil raised heaps of venture capital and even had the obligatory silly name which the founders say is pronounced "cool" and means "knowledge" in Gaelic (though the Irish respectfully disagree). In reality it was (and remains) a giant disappointment - slow, irrelevant and prone to crashing.
The same thing happened with Wolfram Alpha, the pompously named "computational knowledge engine" created by mathematician and serial self-congratulator Stephen Wolfram. Even though Wolfram himself discouraged the idea, commentators leaped to ask, breathlessly, "Is this the Google killer?"
In fact Wolfram Alpha is nothing like Google. Whereas Google finds existing information, Wolfram Alpha figures out answers based on its "knowledge" of concepts like mathematical principles. Type in "population of Cape Town compared to Washington" and it will promptly tell you that Cape Town's population is six-odd times that of the US capital.
But Wolfram Alpha's usefulness to ordinary web users is questionable. It can do differential calculus, but it can't find you the cheapest flight to Mauritius, or even anything about yourself (unless you are world famous). It's also annoyingly smug. When you search for "Wolfram Alpha" it says "assuming 'wolfram alpha' is a historical event".
Looking in the wrong place
Then when someone does finally launch a product (possibly) capable of competing with Google, it's roundly scoffed at and derided. I'm talking about Bing, Microsoft's newly revamped search engine. Microsoft have been cast as the industry's greedy, clumsy villain for so long that people (including me) find it hard to accept when they actually launch something worthwhile.
So what if people joke that "Bing" stands for "But it's not Google"? The thing is fast, slick, full of useful new features and - above all - highly relevant. Sure, they shouldn't have called it a "decision engine, but Microsoft may finally have got it right. Their share of global search has jumped between four and six percent since launch. That may be a blip, or it may be a sea change - time will tell.
But even with a worthy adversary like Bing, we are still looking in the wrong place. Giants of any industry are normally slain by the most unexpected opponents. When Google started rapidly gaining ground around the turn of the century, no one labelled them a "display advertising killer" or a "newspaper killer" - although both of those would be turn out to be fairly accurate appellations.
If forced to pick a "Google Killer" right now I'd say something like Twitter would be a likely suspect. The real-time nature of public conversation on the site has made it into a kind of global pulse for the latest events and trends, and the speed at which it changes makes even mighty Google seem ponderous.
Time's a killer
Notice I say something like Twitter, since they have yet to find a revenue model, and may die the tragic death of the first mover (Netscape anyone?) But the idea of Twitter - what it does and what it means - that's the truly revolutionary thing here.
But by far the most likely "Google killer" will be time. Flush with money and the best brains in the business, Google enjoys the kind of head start that Ford and General Motors had in the early twentieth century.
But decades of dominance eventually breeds contempt and sloth. And so the mighty Google will probably not fall to a single foe, but like GM finally succumb to death by a thousand cuts.
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