Do Search Engines Replicate Network TV?

Max Kalehoff of Nielsen BuzzMetrics wrote yesterday at MediaPost Publications about the idea of Google, Yahoo! and MSN emulating the early days of television when the three big networks dominated the scene. It's a different take on what's become a common topic of conversation...can the big three engines fend off competitors, or will we see a day where search spreads out to be represented by multiple providers.

From the article:

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MASS media was perhaps best characterized by the peak in audience of the three big broadcast television networks. Of course, that era ended as a fourth and fifth network emerged, and even dozens and hundreds more arrived across cable, satellite and now the Internet. Many have said the Internet is most responsible for furthering media fragmentation and driving consumer empowerment. The notion of control by only a few traditional media institutions is going away. We've entered a digital, distributed world where the little guy can be heard. Internet search--the rising gatekeeper and window into our media world--is at the center of this evolution.

So, will the reign of a few big search companies follow the fate of other big media subcategories, which continue to bow to competition and fragmentation (for example, the big three television networks)? Will the disproportionate power structure equalize? This question is applicable to the three top search services as a whole, though Google certainly draws the most scrutiny.

He poses a good question, but I think he simplifies it a bit too much. The first half of his article all but implies that no one outside of the big three engines actually receives any traffic. That simply isn't true. Apart from engines like Ask.com and Hotbot, there are dozens, if not hundreds of general and specialty engines pulling in enough traffic to stay in business.

Kalehoff does point out later that Google's biggest competition is likely to come not from other search engines, but from specialty engines that focus heavily on a particular vertical. That may be true, but the reality is that there's plenty of room for lots of search engines. While there may only be space for a few companies to dominate, there's still plenty of space for other engines to stay in business.

After all, following his comparison of television, who would have ever dreamed that the American people could support hundreds of cable channels? There's no reason to think that the Internet will be any different. There's no reason to think that the big three might not continue to dominate search with a company like Ask.com taking the fourth "FOX" spot while dozens, or even hundreds of specialty engines like Rollyo, Vivismo, Technorati and Monster continue to flourish.

Kalehoff goes on to ask:

So, back to that core question: Will the unequal distribution of power in search ever change? Will the Goliaths of search be at all swept by the tide of fragmentation and niches that they helped create?

Perhaps, but again, let's compare it to television. The introduction of cable hasn't suddenly made the major networks obsolete. In fact, many would argue that the introduction of more options simply led people to spend even more time watching elision. That makes me think that there's no reason to believe that the Internet won't simply continue to grow while searchers rely on both major and minor engines for their searching needs.

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