EightBlack.

Now it’s getting interesting.

Check out Snap.

The guy behind Snap is Bill Gross - no stranger to the world of search and no stranger to the internet. Credited with creating GoTo/Overture and about 2 dozen other search related companies he’s a seriously heavy hitter when it comes to this space.

The interesting take on Snap is its user interface.

I’m a big fan of split screen usability (more later) but the challenge for Snap is getting users familiar with the actual interface.

John Battelle writes:

Today Snap is relaunching as a “broadband search engine.” That means, it’s heavy on Ajax features, clustering, and related results, among other things. It certainly is a new look.

The results include large thumbnails of prospective pages, for example, and a suggested terms autocomplete feature (not unlike Google Suggest). In fact, there are tons of features that have been tried in various other places, but never have so many been implemented in one place at one time.

It’s an attempt to fight one’s way out of the single search box interface, and whether it works or not, it’s worth a look. The theory is sound - which is usually the case with Gross’s companies - but often he’s ahead of the market.

If you look at the search space in general - the challenge is relatively simple to understand.

There may well be better search interfaces than Google.

In fact, a buddy of mine, Derek Franklin is the creator of Search Automator, quite possibly the best designed search interface around.

It aggregates results from all the major engines and you can display audio clips, video, images etc. I wont bother going into the detail of Search Automator now but you should check it out.

Yet Derek’s problem is not too different from Snap’s.

In his case, I think his business model is flawed.

You have to pay to download Search Automator. Now, while Derek’s been remarkably successful at getting people to do this, the sustainability is not there. He needs to find a way where he can give away the application to get traction and work out how, via adsense or its equivalent, can monetise the whole thing.

Back to Snap.

It’s the same problem.

It’s not that Snap hasn’t got what to takes.

It’s just that Google has around 60% of the world’s search traffic.

Yahoo next.

And Microsoft is the sleeping giant who’s just been woken from a deep slumber.

Combined, these 3 technology powerhouses will dominate the search space.

Why?

Traction. Google’s got it. Took 8 years.

Yahoo’s got it - was clever in creating a portal with tentacles everywhere.

And Microsoft - well, it will do whatever it takes to grab a piece of the action and can bully its way into search by forcing new IE users to have a Microsoft Live! interface in its browser.

All have deep pockets, which is now a condition of entry into the space.

(Sidebar - GOOG, MSFT and YHOO have a combined market cap of $113 + $236 + $43 = $392).

Oh, that’s BILLION by the way.

As smart as Bill Gross is, most of the world is so conditioned to looking at Google that it’s going to be hard to look a new (albeit better) interface.

It’s not impossible.

But the space is getting tougher.

Subscribe to more posts like this

Related Posts:

Add to | | | View blog reactions

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 5:07 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.