Chapter 4: The Search Engine Industry

Abstract

In this chapter we present the main trends in the search engine industry. Being such industry technology based, its dynamics can be assessed by applying theories such as (a) dominant design, (b) complementary assets, (c) product and service architecture and (d) disruptive technologies. We dedicate the first section of this chapter to reviewing such literature and explaining how to apply it to identify trends in the search engine industry competition. As preliminary result we position the search engine industry among those that are probably entering in a new fluid phase. In this industry the Google architecture already emerged as dominant design, but after 2005 many new players entered the market (e.g. Cuil, Kosmix, Powerset, Wolfram Alpha, Bing) and most of them are not following the dominant design but are really trying to propose something radically new. Then, we present the data gathering tool we build to use analyze a sample of 26 search engines. In particular, we describe the dimensions, relevant to study the search engine industry, and the metrics for measuring the features of different search engines along those dimensions. We consider three types of metrics: (a) user based – what the user can perceive and act upon; (b) machinery related – what the search engine does internally; and (c) business model oriented – what makes the business profitable. Then we analyze the data using three methods: principal component analysis, two steps cluster analysis, and post hoc analysis on the business models categorization. We close the chapter discussing the results of our analysis.