Breakingviews.com - Encouraging Signs From Some I.P.O.’s - NYTimes.com.
Suddenly, search engines seem to be multiplying. Microsoft is set to introduce Kumo, its latest effort to crack Google’s dominance in search.
Meanwhile, sites like WolframAlpha and Newssift are trying to find safe and profitable niches for specialized searches. Sadly, up to now Google’s supposed rivals have generated more hype than meaningful results. Microsoft’s efforts to take on Google are starting to appear quixotic. It has been introducing search initiatives for years, yet its share has shrunk to less than 10 percent of the market, according to comScore, compared with Google’s 64 percent. Kumo’s new features sound evolutionary, not radical. A more promising approach is to concentrate on niches overlooked by Google.
The new WolframAlpha search engineaims to answer technical and scientific questions. That sounds promising because the site’s founder, Stephen Wolfram, developed the well regarded program Mathematica. WolframAlpha’s method also sounds impressive: the site uses algorithms and interrogates high-quality databases to compute answers to questions. Unfortunately, the results don’t deliver, even in its supposed forte of math and sciences. Type in “second derivative” and the site hasn’t a clue. Biology doesn’t fare better. Type in “dog” and you get an impressive list of statistics on the species Canis lupus. Dogs are indeed a sub-species of grey wolves, but chihuahuas don’t get as heavy as people and have tails almost two feet long.
Newssift, the specialized search site for news introduced by the Financial Times Group, offers a host of helpful-looking methods to drill down on news items. The results, sadly, appear scattershot. These could just be teething pains of new entrants. But failing to hit the ground running makes it easier for Google to catch up and replicate their features. And history doesn’t provide much reason for optimism. Take Cuil. Former Google employees introduced the site last year, but the search engine couldn’t even locate itself at first. It hasn’t caught on. It’s not so much a problem with the new sites’ ideas or their developers’ pedigrees. It’s more that, if it chooses, Google can outgun them so easily. That may become a concern for competition-minded regulators.
ROB COX, ALIZA ROSENBAUM and ROBERT CYRAN
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