Monday, May 14, 2007

Google to Lose the FIRST Place Soon

Google, the leader of the online search engines, is more and more challenged by other Internet companies that are aiming to build similar solutions with the ones developed by the search giant. In the recent period, the most threatened product is surely YouTube, the online video sharing service, acquired in October 2006 for $1.6 billion. Microsoft and News Corporation announced their plans to build a solution similar with the one powered by Google, aiming to lure the same segment of users. GodTube is also a YouTube competitor that was created to attract Christians and offer them church-related content. As a reply, Google created a special YouTube channel for bishops that will offer the same type of clips.

The most powerful news service on the Internet, Google News, is now challenged by MySpace News a similar solution that receives news from numerous sources. Just like the Google product, MySpace received headlines from several publications and organizes them on categories, offering a Digg-like functionality that enables users to vote the news. Although the solution was launched yesterday, it's obvious the company will have a new rival for the news service.

Some days ago, the Checkout solution offered by Google received a new rival after Yahoo announced a deal with PayPal to allow users to buy products straight from the SERP. Using the new deal, the giant portal will include a product link on the search engine result page, offering a small checkout sign, enabling the visitors to buy stuff. As a reply, Google renamed it Froogle, the old shopping service to Product Search.

Only one thing is sure: Google has numerous competitors in multiple domains but, this is surely a good thing especially for us, the users. The competition promotes better solution and better performance, creating new solutions.

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