April 10, 2008
Taking on Google: IAC tries a different tack
Vertical search, social search and now… identity search?
The attempts to outflank Google continue. This time it’s Barry Diller’s IAC, which has already failed to make much of a dent in the three years it has owned Ask.com. Diller’s latest gamble: that a search engine aimed at a particular demographic has a better chance of success.
Hence Rushmore Drive, which launches today - a site which wants to become the Google of the US’s 50m-strong black population (African-American is too narrow a label, says Johnny Taylor, the IAC executive in charge.) Taylor says the plan is to deliver a full Web search, but tilted towards the particular interests and outlook of its target audience (the patented algorithm that does the tilting could be used to build search engines for other broad demographics, he adds.)
So is this a better way to attack the search market? Logic suggests that if you can create a differentiated product and brand and market it well, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to carve out a slice of a market, even against a dominant company like Google.
Distribution will be one challenge. Inertia is a powerful force. How many internet users take the trouble to reset the default search engines they are first presented with?
The acid test, though, will be whether Rushmore Drive (named after the search engine’s street address) really can build and brand a “better” product for its target audience. A former senior search executive I spoke to this week put it this way: “The basics of search aren’t such a big deal - but there are many, many tweaks.” This process of “tuning” a search engine is a difficult art. There is also the not inconsiderable challenge of delivering results in 0.3 seconds (that’s how long it took for Google to come back with results to the query for “Rushmore Drive”.)
But unlike Ask.com, which tried to compete with Google head-on, at least Rushmore Drive has a different story to tell.
The problem with attacking Google is that Google has not yet gotten itself into a position where the strategy that has made it all powerful has turned it into a commodity.
For a conversation starter here, “What do you do if your were Staples, Starbucks or Kodak, and the strategy that once made you all powerful, now turns you into a commodity?”
You have to think harder. You can’t just set managers with industry experience in an office, hired from other firms, and expect them to brainstorm anything other than a parity strategy. Forget Mergers & Acquisitions too.
When I make people think harder, it hurts, but the strategic innovation returns on investment would hurt Google so good. Here’s a link to our blog. You can get to our web site from there.
Posted by: Calle & Company | April 17th, 2008 at 12:53 am | Report this comment