<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Ok, I'll bite ….Here's my two cent rant (dream)…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What's motivating the internet search industry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it the desire to help people?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it the desire to save people some time while allowing them to find what it is they are looking for?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is the desire to treat users fairly in all regards?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it the desire to align internet data, services, etc so that the internet and search technology can progress as fast as possible and live up to its potential sooner rather than later?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The major desire and motivating factor is too make money and maintain control of the internet environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That's why those who already have money and majority control will remain most successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Those with the most money are going to win the money game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">What if a search engines motivating factors were much different though? What if one of a search engine's primary motivating factors was the desire to help people perform better and more useful searches?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What if a primary motivating factor for a search engine was to treat internet searchers with fairness in all regards?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"></span>With those intentions as the primary motivators, I believe a truly useful, efficient, popular, etc search engine could be created quite simply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Coincidentally, I believe that a search engine with those primary motivations would also make lots of money (despite what traditional business paradigms say about fairness, etc in regards to the bottom line).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></div>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">What if instead of trying to dream up new fangled ways of doing something as simple as create a large online database (search engine), a search company was just exceedingly dedicated to its internet searchers (those who ultimately make or break any search engine) and to the intentions briefly described above?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">What if a search company put people and quality above profit?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Gasp…. I don't mean like corporations do (which is to say they don't really they just say they do to sell more of whatever it is they are selling), but I mean really and truly make those intentions the primary motivating factors of the search engine?</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I believe internet searchers deserve nothing less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When someone searches the internet they are performing a service for the search engine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why not pay them (directly or indirectly)? They are the ones arranging the search engine's database (as their search queries update data files) in the most contextually (socially, etc) relevant way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why do internet searchers currently get less than nothing (when adjusted for big-picture economics) to perform a service for search engines (and make the owners rich)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why do only a few people get to keep the trillions of dollars of profit generated by search engines?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The bottom line is that without internet searchers, search engines are useless.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Yes, I know, im sure the search execs are saying, "but we offer you a useful a service and we give you free things like online storage, email, documents, etc?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why are you complaining?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You are our customer and we LOVE you? Our feelings are hurt that you would even think such selfish thoughts </font><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-hansi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings"><span style="mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings">L</span></span><font face="Times New Roman">" </font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">The 'realists' are saying, "why do birds have wings?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why are some people rich and some people poor?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why don't you just be a good citizen and do what everybody else does?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Who do you think you are?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Quit complaining, you're not special.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You are just like everyone else and the status quo is always right, so just shut up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How dare you propose some kind of 'disruptive' (what exactly does that mean btw) idea / technology … be careful… you know what happened to the last person with a 'disruptive' idea, right?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>While I must admit that I am impressed with the amount of services Google (and others) offer their users, how tiny is the fraction of their revenue that is actually required / used to provide those services?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Money aside, what is the price internet searchers pay in lost efficiency, wasted time, etc due to the fact that these traditional search engines are set up to make themselves more money, not to perform searches in the best way (for the user) possible?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">The most popular search websites are simply search engines of its customer lists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is next to impossible to find anything of real value (unless you don't mind getting the same large companies / websites returned for just about every search you perform) when searching on most search engines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These search engines do little more than scratch the surface of the surface of the surface of the information the internet provides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It really doesn't have to be that way though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">What if a user could search any search engine and get useful search results?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What if a user could click any ad-link (on any website) and have the revenue directed to a company of his or her choice or even go back to the user?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Of course the technology already exists to do this and search engines know this so they created "search for donation" sites that pay charity a less than a minuscule donation when you search on those sites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Of course these sites only superficially placate users enough to prevent them from expecting more from search engines and to prevent them from creating a better solution themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These sites are merely jetsam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Although every bit of money donated to charity helps, donating to charity is not the primary goal of these sites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Also, there were the now-failed companies that paid users to "surf" the net. But these companies were built on the infra structure and with the same intentions of the current search paradigm and so were irrelevant and wrought with click / ad fraud, etc (hence the failure).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Regarding ideas:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My dad used to say that, "ideas are like a--holes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Everyone's got one and they all stink."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Actually, I think he used to say that, "excuses are like a--holes …" but 'idea' works just as well in that metaphor.</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Honestly, there are many simple solutions (ideas) to the search "problem".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>None of those ideas that have money as the primary motivating factor will 'beat' the incumbents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">On the other hand, just about any idea that makes fairness, quality, efficiency, etc its goal will succeed (with or without money)…. I've thought of a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If anyone is interested in implementing them send me an email….</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Take Care,</font></p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Bryan Randall</span><br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 7:56 PM, Jason Calacanis <<a href="mailto:jason@calacanis.com">jason@calacanis.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="Ih2E3d">> a large number of people - If the company doesn't have to be big, you don't<br>> need a lot of people. I think Craigslist (for just one example), which is a<br>> huge service, has a staff of 25? And it started out smaller than that.<br>
<br></div>Yes, that is a great example of a service that was built of a long<br>time very slowly. Of course, when they started they didn't have<br>competition to speak of.<br><br>If you look at the search space Wikia, PowerSet, and Mahalo are coming<br>
into a space where there are MANY excellent search options. Google and<br>Yahoo are doing AMAZING things in search... and they are working on<br>thousands of significant improvements all the time.<br><br>Search is a very mature space with a lot of revenue at stake... it's<br>
not classifieds in 1996.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> Okay, sure... but if you don't need all that capital in the first place...<br>> Actually, what you need that capital for is *marketing*.<br><br></div>Not true actually.<br><br>Google, YouTube, and Weblogs, Inc. spent exactly nothing on marketing.<br>
The best products on the web spread by work of mouth or some viral<br>component (think syndication of videos in YouTube's case).<br><br>Mahalo is spending exactly zero on marketing.<br><br>Ask.com spent $100m on marketing last year and didn't change their<br>
share of search.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> I think ideas are more important than you seem to - without ideas you've got<br>> nada - but your point about execution is a good one.<br><br></div>Most folks over emphasize the importance of ideas. It's human nature. :-)<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>>> In terms of specific ideas if you make a list of them I will tell you<br>>> exactly how likely they are to work on a percentage basis.*<br>> Hah! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take you seriously, or not!?<br>
<br></div>Not kidding at all. Make a list and I will give you the exact<br>percentage chance that it will work... but only to two decimal points.<br>:-)<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>> users. Does it have to work this way? No. Mahalo does the same thing -<br>> reinforces the position of the incumbents. Users would be better served by<br>> an intelligent (whether computer powered, or human powered) system that is<br>
> constantly on the lookout for for the *best* resources, whether they be new<br>> or old.<br><br></div>If you're saying that it takes a long time to get people to switch you<br>are absolutely correct. Incumbents have a huge advantage because<br>
people are lazy and they will not switch services EVEN IF the new<br>service is better. There are people using AOL Mail at this very moment<br>in fact.<br><br>That is why it is so important to create a product that is 2-3x better<br>
than the incumbents... not 2-3% better. If you compare PowerSet's<br>current offering it is--in most cases--no different than searching in<br>Google with the "site:<a href="http://wikipedia.org/" target="_blank">wikipedia.org</a>" parameter. in fact, it's worse as<br>
often as it is better.<br><br>Making something better than Google/Yahoo/MSN is a five to ten year<br>project. Look forward to discussing it with you during that time.<br><br>all the best, Jason<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d">---------------------<br>Jason McCabe Calacanis<br>CEO, <a href="http://www.mahalo.com/" target="_blank">http://www.Mahalo.com</a><br></div>
<div class="Ih2E3d">Mobile: 310-456-4900<br>My blog: <a href="http://www.calacanis.com/" target="_blank">http://www.calacanis.com</a><br></div>
<div class="Ih2E3d">AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis<br>My admin: <a href="mailto:admin@calacanis.com">admin@calacanis.com</a><br></div>
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