The search engine war

May 24, 2005 14:53 GMT  ·  By

Although the war of the search engines generate news every time MSN, Yahoo and Google launch another service, by now the dispute has nothing to do with Web searching.

If not long ago, Google, Yahoo and MSN were fighting over who has the most indexed pages and who is the most accurate, now, it seems everybody is more concerned with launching new services.

This would be ok, if these services didn't look so much alike. It doesn't even matter who's offering them anymore.

Right after one of them has a new idea, the other two come up with almost identical alternatives, and promote them as being a much better and cheaper than the competition's.

Google has a Desktop Search tool, MSN immediately launches a toolbar that integrates desktop searching, and Yahoo announces we ain't seen nothing yet.

Google says Google Earth will be launched, Microsoft strikes back with MSN Virtual Earth, and Amazon.com, a newbie in the search business announces something similar.

And the fight rages on, all the companies wanting the same trophy: more income from online searching. In a short time, it won't even matter what results we obtain from our search queries.

And although Yahoo and MSN hope that each new service takes them one step closer to Google, the result is far from being decided.

Truth is I for one miss my simple search engine, which strived to offer the best results, not new services. Do you know where that search engine is?