Pretenders to their throne?

Search engine technology is putting the up to Google, but for now its market share seems safe.

"Google is your friend". This idiom was allegedly attributed to a college professor when one of his students asked him where to find research for a paper he was working on. Since then, the word Goggle has even become a verb - "did you Google it?"

You have to wonder could Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, possibly have conceived that their PhD project would become part of the lexicon not just of computer speak but of common everyday language.Google has dominated the search space for almost a decade. Current industry analyses estimate its share of the market at 50 per cent. So, is it time or even possible for someone else to come along and put up some decent competition?

There has already been several attempts to knock Google from its perch, companies such as clusty.com, help.net and ask.com to name a few. Now Japan (yes, the country) is trying to utilise its strength in developing devices such as mobile phones and car navigation systems to create proprietary search and information retrieval functions.

One of the latest attempts to usurp Google is coming from Powerset. It's been two years in the making and is based on what the company terms as "natural-language" technology.

Powerset's algorithms are programmed to understand search requests submitted in ordinary English, a change from the "keyword" system used by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and many more. This distinction means users will theoretically be able to get more meaningful results by typing more precise searches in the form of straightforward questions, such as: "What did Steve Jobs say about Apple?", instead of entering an ungrammatical mash like "Apple Steve Jobs comments".

Ask Jeeves was founded and floundered on the premise that internet search requests should be posed as questions, but only ended up irritating users with too many irrelevant answers. After a near collapse in the dot-com bust, the company adopted the keyword approach to search algorithms. It is now known as Ask.com.

Google's boffins also acknowledge the limited abilities of keyword searches and have often made noises about better understanding what the user is searching for. Hence, it has hired thousands of extra employees and spent nearly $2.2 billion (€1.6 billion) on research and development since the end of 2005.

Some industry analysts are sceptical about Powerset's chances, citing the difficulty in the engine's ability to comprehend all the different ways that people seeking the same type of information can phrase their questions, which would produce different search results even though they are essentially asking the same thing. Computers, after all, have trouble recognising synonyms.

Dr Damien McLoughlin, director of the marketing development programme at UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School says when people use Google it's done for fairly mundane things such as "what's on at the movies", "what's the phone number of the bank" and so on. With that in mind, the technical features of Powerset don't apply. "In order for someone to take out Google they're going to have to do one of two things; first, you would have to provide some type of discontinuous value innovation (coming up with a completely new approach/technology/offering for customers), such as Ryanair do.

"And second, you can outspend them from a branding point of view. If Powerset wanted to take on Google it would have to invest heavily in its brand to make sure that customers know what the value of using it is," he says.

McLoughlin is also critical of what Powerset's offering is. "If you go to Google or Wikipedia you can see in about five seconds what it does for you.

"I looked at Powerset from a few different sources and I'm not 100 per cent sure what the product is. If it's not clear enough to communicate that, how is someone such as my mother, who's familiar with and uses Google, meant to know what it's about."

Fergal O'Byrne, chief executive of the Irish Internet Association believes that Google can be toppled but it will take an extraordinary effort. He says Google itself is acutely aware of potential competitors and that's one of the reasons why it has expanded into other areas, such as trying to own the users' desktop with applications such as gmail, desktop search and all of the other functions such as Google docs.

O'Byrne says it's also rumoured Google is working on a browser.

"So far no one has managed to crack the nut of combining excellent search with the brand leverage that Google has built up. Some of the competing search engines that have come and gone were better technical engines, but they didn't have the clout or sheer ubiquitous global brand that Google has," says O'Byrne.

While the industry would undoubtedly like to see a successful competitor to Brin and Page's search engine, it looks less likely when you consider that cash-rich mega corporations such as Microsoft and Yahoo, which have both poured billions into their research, have not dented Google's global market share. In fact there's tech gossip that Yahoo could be about to divest itself of its search technology.

"There's a rumour coming down the pipeline from the states that Yahoo is about to sell its search arm to Google," says O'Byrne. "That's extraordinary. But then again search is a massive drain on Yahoo's resources and its strengths are more in its portal and information provision than search."

So is Google going to become the Colgate toothpaste of its market? And perpetually retain 50 per cent of its industry?

It's a possibility that McLoughlin thinks could happen. "Yes, they've penetrated so far down into the market and what Google is about is selling ads and position. And if they've got the eyes of the world on them, then they're the market leader. The big problem in that marketplace is technological change and no one knows where we'll end up in the next few years."

With the insane pace of the technology world, Google might yet have to encounter and be beaten by an innovation it doesn't even know about yet.

Fresh ideas force old favourites to work harder

It can be hard to take down an incumbent such as Google. You have to have the right value proposition for the customer and you have to hit all the right branding notes. Easy, right?

Well no, but history has shown us some major companies that once dominated their domain, but were ultimately usurped by up and coming younger bucks.

IBM was once the kingpin of the IT world, until Microsoft claimed that throne, just as Google is, arguably, elbowing Microsoft to one side now.

The best example in Ireland is Ryanair. No one would have conceived of Aer Lingus not being the prime carrier of this country (pictured left).

Not only in Ireland, but Ryanair carries more passenger than British Airways and other airlines throughout Europe.

"Ryanair came in and pulled the rug from under the other airlines' feet with a proposition of value for the customers," said Dr Damien McLoughlin, director of the marketing development programme at UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School.

"For instance it used to cost IR£400 to fly to Manchester and have an Irish breakfast that you didn't have time to eat; now the value is flying there for €1. And anyone who wants to tackle Google is going to have to come up with a Ryanair type model and find what is the value the end user is looking for," he says.

Hoover is another well known name in Irish households and indeed many people still refer to a vacuum cleaner as a Hoover regardless of the brand. However, companies such as Dyson (pictured left) have sucked much of the vacuum cleaner market share away from the famous old company.

The soft drink market was once dominated by companies such as Coke and Pepsi, with the other vendors living off the crumbs from their table.

Enter Red Bull (pictured right), with its clever branding and slogan "it gives you wings", mix in a dose of controversy - the red bull and vodka brigade - and you have a company that's gained huge presence in the fizzy drink department.

In fashion, Zara are beating former giants H&M and Gap with a line of clothing that's created desire and a unique brand.

While other companies crank out and replenish their collections when sold out, Zara fashionistas know when the last item of apparel has disappeared from the rack it won't be coming back. This clever marketing ploy has created an increased interest in the company's clothes.