kivanmaharaj.com

It would seem that most people are predicting that Google will control 90% of all search within the next 6 to 12 months. This is obviously going to lead Google to being labled a monopoly. The only difference between Microsoft and Google is that with Google users can move to other search engines and advertisers can go and find other companies to work with. They use Google by choice. This becomes difficult for governments to slap Google with huge fines as they have not shoved their tools and applications down users throats. Users want to use Google as it is the preferred place to find what you need.

Cuil came into being fairly recently and it is being touted as the Google killer. This is the wrong apporach to take as Google has been in the business for more then 10 years. They also have a revenue model to keep growth running at a furious pace.

If I was Cuil my strategy would have been to do low level marketing and get the guy on the ground to test the search quality. Universities are a great place to start. If they like it then they will be your viral marketing tool. A PR company will hype your product as they get paid to do so. A user has no financial reward so their recommendation is worth more.

Cuil has a long way to go and I think that they really need to think about the next steps carefully before jumping in. You can not have sporadic uptime either as a user will only come once then return to Google or any of the other engines they were using before.

It would be great to see a new search engine come and take a share of the Googles market share but you need to come up with something innovative. Browserank does not cut it for me (Hint hint) or any other type of rank. We would need to start thing out of the Google box if you are going to be anywhere near successful in this battle.

I would take some hot grads from university that have a passion for building the next Google , dump them in a house (big brother style except no cameras) for 1 year with pizza delivery and a credit card with $1 000 000 and see what they come up with.

I will be checking out Cuil from time to time to see if there are imporvements in their search quality. Good luck to them and any other search startup.

Captains Log: Monday July 28 2008

Due to power failures we were unable to do anything  so another day gone by with little progress.

On a brighter note I see cuill has launched and the current hype around it is that it is a serious Google competitor. Will it actually chip away that market share is currently unknown but in order to get traction it needs to build a loyal user base. Technology is one thing but passionateusers are another. We have seen simple sites become giants in its own right. Take a look at craigslist as an example. Simple idea , not fancy technology but a loyal and passionate user base.

My suggestion is to build that base of users like Google has. With out that base no search engine will gain enough traction to chip that ever growing market share Google is gaining.

So good luck to Cuill, while I carry on with my venture.

Captains log closed.