diamondTearz

Google worrying was at one time a laughable concept. After all “Googling” something has become synonymous with searching. But lately there’s been something different on the wind, a Twitter Patter of footsteps growing to a thunderous drum of  footsteps 750% in 2008 and the whisper of something called real-time search. Sure Google would list the most relevant/trustworthy sources and Google still wields the power to make you disappear off the face of the …uh- internet, but sometimes I want what’s going on right now- not the most reliable info from the old news.

Google made the counter-move to real time search of coming out with a new set of features including the ability to narrow your search to the most recent items and to the last 24 hours. come on now- you’re not fooling anyone with that. When I search Twitter I tap into a well of information that other humans find to be relevant RIGHT NOW. Twitter trends will tell me what everyone is thinking about long before Google will predict a flu outbrreak!

And now with talk of the walled garden of Facebook having the ability to disrupt Search engine optimization and the relevance of Google search as we know it, even my Facebook has upped the ante with real-time search in the early stages. When I look for “stuff” I want to get the stuff that my friends trust, used and enjoyed, not the stuff that paid a search engine rocket surgeon 5 figures to move to the top of the search pile.

Add to this the annoyance of Microsoft Live Search Bing suddenly deciding that they are a decision engine, the introduction of Hunch.com , the real decision engine, and Wolfram|Alpha .  Whether or not these search, decision or whatever other tools can search better than Google is less relevant in this battle than “Can they become the first place you go for… (fill in the blank).  They used to say that Microsoft would fight a war of Attrition with Playstation, iPhone and various other companies.  They would pinch away enough of your profit so that despite their failure to make a profit they were able to throw a competitor off their strategy and hurt them a bit- enough to come back with another one and the fabled Microsoft 3rd version.  Eventually Microsoft was getting pinched from many directions by open-source and other competitors.  It seems as if the gentle giant, Google, now finds itself  is in this very position.

Google’s dominance from top to bottom relies on them being the first destination when you have a question.  They can sell ads out the wazoo, make you sell ads on your own site and then charge you to put up your own ads in the very same matrix- because they have so many eyes on them.  If Google falls from the default first place to go to look the impact will reverberate throughout their entire model.

1. Is it Time for Google to Worry?
2. Facebook Search Queries Up Google Down
3. Real Time Web Puts a Strain on the Search Industry
4. The race is on for the best real-time search engine- Lists some of the hottest competitors in the real -time search arena.
5. Bing Posing a Serious Threat to Google? I have noticed more of my traffic coming from Bing recently.
6. Why Google Might Want Us to Think it’s Scared of Bing
7. Kosmix Tries a New Twist to Escape Google’s Search Dominance