Blog Post: Google's attempt to get the government to investigate IE7's search button is pretty laughable.Given the government's less than stellar track record when it comes to trying to use the courts to ensure level playing fields, the New York Times reports that Google is trying to interest the government in an investigation of the search button on a forthcoming version of Internet Explorer are pretty laughable.
Google, with its near-multibillion dollar dominance of the search industry, is worried that Microsoft will use its dominance of the browser market to drive users to use the search functionality in MSN because that's the default search setting.
Now, besides the fact that Google has essentially established its own monopoly, the truth of the matter is that search is in for some real intense levels of competition with the arrival of not just more robust offerings from established players such as Microsoft and Yahoo, but a host of vertical search engine that do a better job of searching specific topics than a general-purpose search engine.
In fact, the day of the general-purpose search engine may soon be coming to a close, because the results people get from search engines such as Google are basically pretty crude. What's needed is a next-generation search engine that is aware of the context in which a user is searching a particular term. For example, a search of the phrase "Windows Expert New York" yields a list of businesses that specialize in cleaning windows in New York City. Now if you're in IT, you would expect that search to yield a list of Windows consultants in New York. But if the Windows client has enough information about you to add a little context to your search, the results you can get from a particular search could be a lot richer.
And if you think any of that is lost on the folks at Google, what do you think is the primary motivation behind their attempts to gain a foothold on the desktop with an array of Google applets?
The bottom line here is that the entire search industry is about to experience a wave of exciting innovations that will ultimately give users a lot more choice across a richer set of search engine tools. And the only thing the government can add to the natural order of technology innovation is the usual amount of confusion and wasted money associated with any government-driven judicial action.
Read more of Michael Vizard's posts on his blog Masked Intentions.
