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If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups. That way, if one of these new engines end being so profoundly awesome that it beats Googl
by andrewfong 19y ago
If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups. That way, if one of these new engines end being so profoundly awesome that it beats Google's engine, Google can have some control over it.
For that matter, that would be my strategy if I were Microsoft or Yahoo too. No matter how many people or how much money you have at your company, you pretty much have one bet on what the next big thing in search is going to be. Multiple competing products within a company is hard to manage and forcing them to cooperate somehow could quickly kill them all off. Investing in other SEs allows you to hedge your bet.
- byrneseyeview 19y ago"If I were Google, I would start buying stakes in new search start-ups." So what you're saying is that if you were Google, you'd provide a subsidy to anyone willing to make some sort of plausible search engine? They're stuck, here. They can't buy stakes in smaller companies without eventually paying someone to build a better Google (at the expense of the current Google), but there's not much else they can do to get around the fact that, as the best company in their business, they have nowhere to go but down.