Google seeking an edge against competitors

GOOGLE TRYING FOR AN EDGE.
Dear BumbleBeeBoogie ,

What do you want to say about Google's endeavour?I'm of the opinion that competition brings a best deal as long as it is healthy.Unhealthy competition sinks the company and along with it, its customers.You don't expect such things in browser wars.Don't you?

Google is playing the field so well that they will be in every crevice of the internet soon. They just bought sprinks and got About's ad inventory at the same time.

Webmasters need competition fast. Google is acting more like Microsoft every day and the trust we had for Google is lessened.

The unmentioned competition will be an open source distributed (as in running on a p2p network) search engine. I think it's a few years off and might not end up being distributed computing but we need an open source alternative to the search engine business.

Google's Virtual Monopoly


Dear Craven de Kere,

Do you yearn for a Linux type open source browser to stop Google monopolising internet? Then you'll also agree that (Linux enjoys) support is required to get that far.Today Microsoft and Google dominate the Market Not because suitable alternatives were absent.But, only because nobody else could garner that much support form the customers and the Trade.

play the field

http://i-une.com

(meta search including google)

Microsoft and Google: Partners or Rivals?
October 31, 2003
Microsoft and Google: Partners or Rivals?
By JOHN MARKOFF and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 - Wall Street is not the only one wooing Google. Microsoft is as well.

Google, the highflying Silicon Valley Web search company, recently began holding meetings with bankers in preparation for its highly anticipated initial public offering as it was still engaged in meetings of another kind: exploring a partnership or even a merger with Microsoft.

According to company executives and others briefed on the discussions, Microsoft - desperate to capture a slice of the popular and ad-generating search business - approached Google within the last two months to discuss options, including the possibility of a takeover.

While the overture appears to have gained little traction - Google indicated that it preferred the initial offering route, the executives said - it demonstrates the enormous importance that Google represents as both a competitive threat to Microsoft and as Silicon Valley's latest hope for a new financial boom.

Though seemingly spurned, Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing Google at a later date, according to an executive briefed on the discussions.

Both Google and Microsoft executives refused to comment.

Google, which was founded by two Stanford computer science graduate students in 1998 and quickly became one of the most popular Web sites in the world, has in recent weeks become the subject of intense speculation since it indicated to Wall Street that it hoped to sell shares of itself to the public sometime in the first half of next year.

Google's ability to stir Silicon Valley into a frenzy has also brought back memories here of Netscape, another start-up firm whose own initial public offering in 1995 helped touch off the dot-com explosion. Netscape once threatened Microsoft with a software browser that promised to be an alternative to its overwhelmingly dominant computer operating system.

Microsoft responded by significantly altering its business and adding its own browser as a free component of its Windows operating system, ultimately undercutting Netscape's business.

Google recently started wheedling down a long list of investment banks it approached earlier this month about underwriting the offering, which could be worth from $15 billion to $25 billion, the executives said. The company, which maintains tens of thousands of computers to help locate information on the Web almost instantly, has also explored the idea of a so-called Dutch auction, bypassing Wall Street and selling shares directly to investors. Such an approach could give it distance from scandal-plagued investment banking deals of the dot-com era as well as create a huge base of small shareholders.

The auction route is said to appeal to Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who are known for their fascination in pursing technical solutions to many different kinds of problems.

But it appears that Google is more likely to take the traditional path of using Wall Street to sell its initial offering. It is still toying with the idea, executives said, of using an online auction for a possible secondary offering as a way to allow its millions of users to have a better opportunity to buy its shares.

The company is considering selling about a 10 to 15 percent stake to the public, which is expected to raise more than $2 billion to be used to invest in the business and generate wealth for its employees, venture capitalists and early investors. Among the banks still competing for the business are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase and Thomas Weisel Partners, the executives said.

Morgan Stanley is viewed as the frontrunner, the executives said, though Google may choose two banks to lead the underwriting effort. Goldman Sachs is also viewed as a contender, the executives said, but Google's management has shown some concern about Goldman's close relationship with Microsoft and Yahoo, another major competitor.

Google has a clearly dominant position in Internet searching, which has served as the foundation of a fast-growing and highly profitable advertising business built around placing specific text ads close to Web queries on similar subjects. Its rapid revenue growth, however, has begun attracting large competitors like Yahoo, which has acquired Overture, a leading search ad provider. While Microsoft and Amazon.com are both considering getting into the business, the growth in Google's Adwords keyword business has, at least for now, started to slow, according to a person with knowledge of the company's business.

Microsoft as a search competitor could change the market's assessment of Google's value. Moreover, if Microsoft attempts to integrate Web search features directly into its coming Longhorn operating system, it could restart the bitter feud that led to the government antitrust case that grew out of Netscape's failure.

Partly in response, Google continues to explore new businesses to extend its reach into new markets and to find new sources of revenue. One such effort included approaching Friendster, a Silicon Valley social networking company that has recently grown rapidly, according to an executive briefed on the talks. Friendster has instead received a $13 million investment from a group of venture capitalists led by Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark Capital, an action that was first disclosed in The Wall Street Journal.

In Silicon Valley, executives and venture capitalists remain divided over the consequence of Google going public. Several people close to the two venture capital firms that are the major Google investors - Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - said that partners at the firms had been focusing closely on the timing of the Google offering, hoping to help jump-start a rebirth of the technology market of the 1990's.

But many other venture capitalists here say that Google is such a unique company that its offering, if and when it comes, is not likely to set off a similar train of events.

"There was a time we were all looking forward to Google," one venture capitalist said on Thursday. "But it's become such an unbelievable event that it is a juggernaut. I no longer believe that it will open up the I.P.O. market broadly."

John Markoff reported from San Francisco; Andrew Ross Sorkin from New York.

Very interesting.

Right now Google has 3 serious rivals. Yahoo (with it's multiple aquisitions), MSN, and Alexa/Amazon as the dark horse.

Of the three each are strong in different areas. Yahoo is the most popular site on the net and they have bought several serach engines. They also have the strongest PPC competitor to Google's advertising (which is taking over the web).

MSN has Microsoft the 800 pound gorilla. Microsoft has billions to spend and has the hardware, what remains to be seen is whether they can put together some good algos for searching. another huge challenge for them will be to design a "clean" site. Searchers have long shown their preference for an uncluttered site and Microsoft has yet to design one, this is child's play. Anyone can do it, it's really a matter of whether they will.

Amazon/Alexa are a dark horse because Amazon is simply the standard for e-commerce and Alexa has the web's largest crawl. It's not yet being used to it's full extent but could be.

These companies need to strike soon. In the future this year will be regarded as the turning point. If they don't challenge Google head-on Google will be hard to knock off their perch.

good insight CDK

Here's another. Avoid Google's IPO, they will probably do it online and the price will be artificially high.

Wait a while for the real price.

Craven
We've had so many examples of why its unwise to invest at the stock opening that one would think that investors have learned the lesson of what you recommend by now. Do we have that short a memory?

BBB

It will be the novelty of the online auction that does it. It's been done before but it will still be a novelty.

Google might be an okay, long term stable buy... who knows...

Alexa sucks... it's full of worms (no pun intended)...

Yahoo is as intrusive and annoying as anything...

Microsoft could survive a nuclear war with all the money they have.

Google is the only one that makes no demands of the consumer... even their advertising is so low-key as to be inoffensive... I don't see any other for-profit engine coming close.