Haven't we seen all this before? Moseying in to the suddenly hot arena of desktop search is Ask Jeeves (NASDAQ:ASKJ), the ne'er-do-well also-ran in the search category. It is launching its version of a utility to scour the hard drives of users for files, emails, and websites. Yawn.
Doesn't anyone in the search industry have an original idea, or do all the innovators simply work at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)? Following the introduction of Google's desktop search program, Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) MSN service introduced its version, with Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) to pile on in 2005. And Alyce Lomax asked yesterday whether we'll soon see imitations of Google's new Suggest feature.
Search, in all its flavors -- whether it's on the desktop, on the Web, or paid -- is becoming the big deal on the Internet. Fool contributor David Meier noted that with the introduction of yet another search service, we're already at an industry market cap of $407 billion! Even Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) offers a search utility, and the latest entrant, Accoona, has a tough row to hoe if it wants to be considered a player in the field. Paid search is growing too. As Rick Aristotle Munarriz notes, it is set to become a $5.5 billion industry by 2009 all by itself. In addition to Google, it is crowded with the likes of FindWhat.com (NASDAQ:FWHT), InfoSpace (NASDAQ:INSP), LookSmart, and Ask Jeeves, all vying to sell contextual ad space.
At one time, Ask Jeeves' search capabilities were innovative. You entered plain English questions into a text box and got relevant answers. But its innovation in the desktop category is that it will separate local and Web results. Ooooooh! The company feels it's confusing when local and Web hits are intermingled, even though it plans to do just that when it launches MyJeeves later next year. That will offer desktop search results from its personalized Web search service.
The utility will provide users with tabs and buttons to locate results and refine their searches even further. You'll be able to locate only those files found in your My Documents folder, for example, or wherever you store images, Office documents, or emails. However, it will not offer an instant messaging index function, as Google and MSN do, because of privacy concerns.
One could make the argument that if you're going to run a search service, then you've got to provide all the innovations that come up. True enough. Or end users could simply stick with the leading innovator and bypass the imitators.
Ultimately, users aren't going to download a multitude of search utilities to their computer; instead, they'll stick with the one that offers the most useful features and the promise of additional innovations. Just as there are many places to sell items at auction on the Internet, the place you go to for the greatest impact is eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY). So too with search. There are many places to get functionality, but Google remains the leader and trendsetter. Everything else is just a tired imitation.
Looking for more to read? Click on:
- Google's Suggestive New Service
- Yet Another Search Engine
- FindWhat.com: A Year Later
- Google's Kissing Cousins
Fool contributor Rich Duprey is continually searching for the freshest Krispy Kreme doughnuts. He does not own any of the stocks mentioned in this article.
