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August 05, 2004
Search Engines - let all dragraces bloom
Boy this category and all it's offshoot categories just seem to keep germinating more competitive dragraces.
In the past we've written a lot about a company we admire, Baidu, the number one search engine in China who successfully dragraced and won in that market. Well, here comes someone to dragrace them.
According to China Digital News, huge Chinese portal Sohu has entered a new challenger, "its all-inclusive, proprietary search engine under the new brand name SoGou, which means 'Search Dog' in Chinese." Search Engine Journal also noted this news but say's it means "Search Fox." Hmm. Pretty different connotations in English I will have to ask some pals about the Chinese. John Battelle notes that, whether dog or fox the logo looks kind of like some kind of cross-breed (between Ebay, Yahoo, Google, Lycos). What I'm really curious about is what is the real secret sauce, or differntiation in the offering and positioning.
Meanwhile in another search market, yet another dragrace has emerged. Local search has been a huge topic. How come it is so hard to find stuff I want where I want it. (Note that local advertising is still the lion's share of the market outside of search). So now for the local search dragrace.
First there was Google's Local Beta. Which John Battelle, noted when it first came out still needed work. Now, there's a beta of Yahoo Local which Battelle seems to like. I need to check them out but I really look forward to hearing his comparison and to watching the dragrace mount (keeping my eyes out for MSN local too).
Posted by johnza at August 5, 2004 09:42 PM
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