SEO Blog

I’ve seen a few links in blogs I read to an interesting article in CNET today. It acknowledges that there still is a lot of room for growth in the search market space, with online advertising spend alone expected to grow by up to 80%. Even at that, online advertising will still be a fraction of offline advertising spends.

The article goes on to comment that another Google is unlikely, as the leaders get entrenched. I would agree: A new market leader in search engines is unlikely to emerge, (although I do know of some new technology which threatens to change the market dynamics). There are innovations out there, some in development, some in very quiet beta testing which can and do threaten Google’s position as “the king of all things search.”

Some of these innovations will be niche market players, some will be multi billion dollar operations (some quickly). I don’t know that any will be pure search engine companies. But I’m also not convinced that Google will think of itself as a search engine company at all 5 years out. A surprising number of their employees whom I’ve spoken to consider themselves to be part of a media company, an advertising agency, an advertising network, and a search engine second. Few think of their employer as first being a search engine.