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Will this new competition improve seaching over-all -- or will it simply make it more confusing? We think Google's success is based on simplicity. We hope our Alphabeticalist (tm) will prove to be the most efficient way to search. (MC)

The following article was taken from the NY Times of 9/27/07

New-Look Search Sites Aim to Close Google Gap / By MIGUEL HELFT / Published: September 27, 2007 / SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 26 —

The race for supremacy in Internet searching has been decidedly one-sided for the last few years, with Google attracting an ever-bigger slice of the market.
That has not stopped underdogs like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com from trying again and again to find new ways to pull in more searchers.

Microsoft is introducing another such effort on Thursday: a major overhaul of its Live Search service (www.live.com). It presents results in ways that are markedly different from the list of 10 blue links that have long been an online standard.

A search using the words “digital camera,” for instance, will deliver photos and links to reviews and shopping information for the most popular digital cameras. This “product guide,” which includes information culled from sites like Amazon.com and PriceGrabber.com, will be followed by traditional search results.
Over the next month, Microsoft will start using this approach for searches related to products, local businesses, health information and entertainment. The idea is to try to anticipate what users want, said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the search and advertising platform group at Microsoft.

“ We call it blended search,” Mr. Nadella said. “We’re giving you instant answers.”

Meanwhile, Yahoo has quietly introduced a similar set of features on its search engine, calling them shortcuts, and is expected to deliver more updates soon. Ask.com made the most radical departure from standard results in June when it unveiled a service called Ask3D. The service displays results in three panels that combine standard search results with suggestions for related queries, blog items, videos, photos, news articles and shopping information.
Yahoo’s shortcuts are already in use on searches related to music, sports, local businesses and travel. Vish Makhijani, senior vice president and general manager for Yahoo Search, said users clicked on shortcuts at a higher frequency than they did on the top Web result. “We’re delivering them because they are of really high value to Yahoo users,” he said.

These companies’ efforts to set their results apart from Google’s come after years in which search engines were largely focused on delivering increasingly comprehensive and relevant links but did little to alter their presentation. The quest to improve the quality of the results themselves continues, and Mr. Nadella promised that Microsoft’s new service would finally be as good on that front as Google’s.

Google, too, has changed its approach to presentation, but far more gradually than its rivals have. In May, for instance, it started a service called universal search that mixes videos, photos, news articles and other items with traditional search results. And it has progressively added modules atop its search results that deliver stock quotes, local weather and flight tracking information in response to queries on those subjects.

Google’s caution has been deliberate. Company officials have said that Google tries to introduce new features without disrupting a formula that has proved to be a hit with users.

Indeed, Google accounted for 56.5 percent of all searches in the United States in August, a gain of nearly 10 percentage points from a year earlier, according to the Web audience measuring firm ComScore. Yahoo was a distant second with 23.3 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft with 11.3 percent, and Ask.com and AOL with 4.5 percent each. AOL’s searches are performed by Google’s technology.

Analysts said the new strategies by Microsoft, Yahoo and Ask.com were not likely to shake up those rankings anytime soon, in part because Google commands such strong loyalty.

“ Habits are hard to break, and it is especially hard to break good habits,” said Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land. “If you’ve had a good experience with Google, you have little reason to switch.”

Mr. Sullivan said users were unlikely to drop Google altogether. But he said the new features introduced by Microsoft and others may persuade some people to use those search engines for specialized queries — say, for health information, entertainment and products.

“ I don’t think any of the things Microsoft and Yahoo are doing are game changers on their own,” Mr. Sullivan said.

The struggles of Ask.com illustrate how hard it is to battle the Google juggernaut. Ask.com has long been considered an innovator in search, and its new features have been praised by analysts and appreciated by its users. But the company has not been able to translate the good reviews into gains in market share.

“ We’re like the Oscar-winning movie that hasn’t made $100 million at the box office,” said Jim Lanzone, the chief executive of Ask.com, which is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. But Mr. Lanzone said he had not lost hope.

“ People don’t switch search engines overnight,” he said.

Like Mr. Lanzone, Mr. Nadella of Microsoft said his goal was not necessarily to steal customers from Google, but rather to entice Microsoft’s millions of users to turn to the service more frequently.

Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research, said this strategy made sense. A company like Yahoo, she said, has hundreds of millions of people who visit its Web site, but not all of them use its search service. “They are not necessarily trying to get the Google loyalist,” Ms. Li said. “Yahoo is trying to get its core users one search at a time.”