Is Google's dominance good for the internet?

[Brian Turner]

Regardless of anyone else may say otherwise, Google has a dominant presence on the internet for search - which has been becoming ever more the most important way to sort and deliver traffic.

It's not just Google.com that delivers Google traffic - national Google search engines also provide an additional boost to Google.com traffic. Then, of course, there are major ISP's, such as AOL, who also use Google's results as the basis for their own.

The trouble is, perhaps, that Google is so dominant in search that if Google sneezes in one direction, thousands of businesses could be crippled in the other direction. Google can't make any changes without benefiting one group and to the detriment of another.

Personal position - the sooner the search stats are equalised by Yahoo! and MSN then the better - it can only make for a more stable internet, with each search engine able to focus on providing results in a specific manner - resulting in a spread of different quality results that can differ significantly across the different search engines.

The result would be that whether Google sneezes or not, other small businesses don't need to feel overtly threatened.

However, Google has clearly made itself the epitome of sophistication and innovation in search, so it is going to be incredibly difficult for the other search engines to make an impression.

Google's innovation keeps it ahead as the choice for search, because it clearly makes the extra effort to enable the user to find something useful to their search.

So - the overall question is - is Google's dominance good for the internet? Does it's push towards innovation in search mean that there is always a quality leader for the internet? Or does its monopoly mean that small businesses are always going to be overtly vulnerable to changes in how Google operates?

General discussion topic.

[Postmaster]

The only problem with that is, can you optimize a site for all 3 search engines? Because a positive for one search engine could be a negative for an other. At present there is plenty cheese for who ever makes it to the top of Google. What scares the poo out of SEO's is probably bots with artificial intelligence, they will be able to judge and point out people that are doing things to game the system more effectively? Of course there is one thing that's fundamental to all top search engines today and that's link popularity, so I suppose if you’re good enough you'll get top regardless of the search. Also judging by the way Yahoo is doing business they are literally trying to copy Google more and more, hell they might as well buy the domain Yoogle or something. It's still early days, it may take years but eventually you will see MSN take top stop in the search engine industry, I mean take MSN for instance, they have included a search button right under the send message button, they are the only ones in my view that has a chance of beating Google at it's own game, if they don't do it within 10 years, Google will be ultimate king forever..

[bumfluff]

I'm not sure about the dominance thing being good or bad, but I think it's a necessary and probably unavoidable phase as the internet grows. The net is still young, especially in a mass-usage, non-geek-only way. With any new technology, there's always a growth period where problems are overcome and standards established. I would imagine that the next 5 or 10 years or so will result in a lot of changes that will make current SEO methods pretty much redundant. Not to say SEO won't have a place, but the methods will have changed and largely become standardised across all search engines.

Just call me "crystal balls" ;P

[Brian Turner]

I think you're quite right, bumfluff - at the moment there's a lot of emphasis on general markets, but I really see a lot of opportunities for the future of vertical niches.