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"Like Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants, it benefits from the network effects whereby the popularity of a service attracts more users and thus becomes self

"Like Facebook, Amazon and other tech giants, it benefits from the network effects whereby the popularity of a service attracts more users and thus becomes self-perpetuating." The network effect is very clear with Facebook, but it is not clear to me at all when it comes to Google Search. The product doesn't seem to get any better or worse when more people use it.

nickik 12y ago
Playing devils advocate "Well they are making more profit, and they can invest that in there product and then make it better. Dont you see the network effect?".
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  You'd have a network effect if the presence of third parties (the "network") coerces you to choose one product over another. Say, Facebook over Diaspora because your peers are all in the former but not the latter (ignoring the other, quite material, differences for this example), or the monopolist's telephone network over another (that the monopolist refuses to peer with at reasonable rates). Possibly ad-networks, too (tons of ad spaces spread over the entire web with good payout rates) - which is why the FTC requested some changes to the AdSense ToS (regarding the use of multiple ad networks) and got them. IMHO the attempt (by several european telcos) to force open messenger networks for interoperability might get more traction than attacking search engines for "network effects". I just hope that (should this ever happen) it will be a poisoned gift in that instead of giving telcos preferential treatment, they (Facebook/WhatsApp, Google, MS) simply provide fully open interfaces - and users continue to route around the failure that is telco messaging.
frabcus 12y ago
Yes, Google Search does get better the more people use it. There are three reasons: 1) The actual search gets more signal. Literally from activity on the search engine, but also from many other places Google gets data. 2) The more popular Google is as a traffic source, the more people pay attention to getting that traffic. Website owners put effort into specifically making Google search results good. Some of that is bad SEO, but a lot of SEO (i.e. making good websites) delivers lots of value, and it is basically all Google-targeted right now. As a very simple (negative!) example - think of sites with a robots.txt that allows only a small number of search engines. 3) Advertising. Google's marketplace for ads gets better the more people use it, on both sides of the two sided market. Why's this matter? Because it generates money, more effectively than any competitor. And they use that money to buy engineers to improve the search experience (and, indeed, the ad relevance experience!) To me, that's a very clear network effect.
- magicalist 12y ago
  > The more popular Google is as a traffic source, the more people pay attention to getting that traffic. Website owners put effort into specifically making Google search results good I see this a lot and while it's true, it's also true that it's not all that difficult to keep the googlebot happy, you'd still be trying to keep crawlers happy if Google wasn't the most popular search engine, and, in fact, what you have to do for the google crawler is basically exactly the same as what you have to do for everyone else[1] (and not in the sense that everyone else just follows Google's lead in what they require because it's all pretty straightforward and generic advice and is, again, not all that difficult to follow). [1] http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fb...
  - pgeorgi 12y ago
    even if there are engine specific optimizations (like the #! javascript single page application path thing they promoted for a while), the major engines usually converge towards a single format quickly. And the fringe engines (YACY and the like) had no idea how to work with SPAs in the first place, so no loss there...
- nickik 12y ago
  About SEO. In the beginning SEO was easy but now it is hard, so hard that doing SEO actually forces you to make good websites. I have worked in a startup and we have talked at length with SEO experts and lots of things that you do knowdays to improve your result is actually good stuff, adding good metadata, writting storys that actually capture peoples attention. Sure with enougth money you can still hire tons of people who spam you all over the internet. So it seams to me that because google search is so good, it forces people to actually make better websites.
duncanawoods 12y ago
There is a feedback loop between use and ranking quality so that the more people that use google search, the better the ranking will be. I believe they used to use information about which item in the results people clicked on to revise rankings e.g. if 90% of people on pick on result 7 for the same query, this indicates it should probably be no. 1. Whether they still use this or it "got gamed", I have no idea. One network effect I am particularly bothered by is that developers are forced to design pages to suit Google's crawler & ranking whims less they be penalised to page 2 oblivion. The more people that use Google, the more important it is to design for Google and the better Google search will be with the side-effect of compromising actual content and the needs of the real audience. This is why monopolies suck, because in practice, I don't have a choice but do this.
halo 12y ago
Google uses tracking data from previous searches to influence their search ranking. As soon as you figure that out then it's easy figure out why it's so tough to compete with Google on search. No-one else has a similar set of data.

nickik 12y ago

Playing devils advocate "Well they are making more profit, and they can invest that in there product and then make it better. Dont you see the network effect?".

pgeorgi 12y ago
You'd have a network effect if the presence of third parties (the "network") coerces you to choose one product over another. Say, Facebook over Diaspora because your peers are all in the former but not the latter (ignoring the other, quite material, differences for this example), or the monopolist's telephone network over another (that the monopolist refuses to peer with at reasonable rates). Possibly ad-networks, too (tons of ad spaces spread over the entire web with good payout rates) - which is why the FTC requested some changes to the AdSense ToS (regarding the use of multiple ad networks) and got them. IMHO the attempt (by several european telcos) to force open messenger networks for interoperability might get more traction than attacking search engines for "network effects". I just hope that (should this ever happen) it will be a poisoned gift in that instead of giving telcos preferential treatment, they (Facebook/WhatsApp, Google, MS) simply provide fully open interfaces - and users continue to route around the failure that is telco messaging.

frabcus 12y ago

Yes, Google Search does get better the more people use it. There are three reasons: 1) The actual search gets more signal. Literally from activity on the search engine, but also from many other places Google gets data. 2) The more popular Google is as a traffic source, the more people pay attention to getting that traffic. Website owners put effort into specifically making Google search results good. Some of that is bad SEO, but a lot of SEO (i.e. making good websites) delivers lots of value, and it is basically all Google-targeted right now. As a very simple (negative!) example - think of sites with a robots.txt that allows only a small number of search engines. 3) Advertising. Google's marketplace for ads gets better the more people use it, on both sides of the two sided market. Why's this matter? Because it generates money, more effectively than any competitor. And they use that money to buy engineers to improve the search experience (and, indeed, the ad relevance experience!) To me, that's a very clear network effect.

magicalist 12y ago
> The more popular Google is as a traffic source, the more people pay attention to getting that traffic. Website owners put effort into specifically making Google search results good I see this a lot and while it's true, it's also true that it's not all that difficult to keep the googlebot happy, you'd still be trying to keep crawlers happy if Google wasn't the most popular search engine, and, in fact, what you have to do for the google crawler is basically exactly the same as what you have to do for everyone else[1] (and not in the sense that everyone else just follows Google's lead in what they require because it's all pretty straightforward and generic advice and is, again, not all that difficult to follow). [1] http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fb...
- pgeorgi 12y ago
  even if there are engine specific optimizations (like the #! javascript single page application path thing they promoted for a while), the major engines usually converge towards a single format quickly. And the fringe engines (YACY and the like) had no idea how to work with SPAs in the first place, so no loss there...
nickik 12y ago
About SEO. In the beginning SEO was easy but now it is hard, so hard that doing SEO actually forces you to make good websites. I have worked in a startup and we have talked at length with SEO experts and lots of things that you do knowdays to improve your result is actually good stuff, adding good metadata, writting storys that actually capture peoples attention. Sure with enougth money you can still hire tons of people who spam you all over the internet. So it seams to me that because google search is so good, it forces people to actually make better websites.

duncanawoods 12y ago

There is a feedback loop between use and ranking quality so that the more people that use google search, the better the ranking will be. I believe they used to use information about which item in the results people clicked on to revise rankings e.g. if 90% of people on pick on result 7 for the same query, this indicates it should probably be no. 1. Whether they still use this or it "got gamed", I have no idea. One network effect I am particularly bothered by is that developers are forced to design pages to suit Google's crawler & ranking whims less they be penalised to page 2 oblivion. The more people that use Google, the more important it is to design for Google and the better Google search will be with the side-effect of compromising actual content and the needs of the real audience. This is why monopolies suck, because in practice, I don't have a choice but do this.

halo 12y ago

Google uses tracking data from previous searches to influence their search ranking. As soon as you figure that out then it's easy figure out why it's so tough to compete with Google on search. No-one else has a similar set of data.