One blogger delved into the offerings from the world’s top search engine, placed them into matrices against Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, and sought to find if Google was truly unique.
Bill Gates doesn’t see anything special about Google. He acknowledged their search accomplishments, but found little to impress him in products like Gmail or Google Talk.
Tristan Louis’ blog entry takes up the Gates gauntlet, and matches Google against the three other big players in the online portal space.
For uniqueness of search products, Google’s catalog and Usenet search are the only ones not duplicated by AOL, Microsoft, or Yahoo. Of those two, the catalog offering doesn’t seem to be very up to date, and the Usenet search comes from Google’s acquisition of DejaNews.
In services, Google Answers stands out from the other three portals. Services like desktop or mobile search can be found on any of the four. Google doesn’t have an entry in non-search services like auctions or a calendar application, though Google Base could be a quasi-entry into the auction/classified field when it launches.
The calendar application could be a relatively easy one to implement, and we speculated on the availability of one in August. Mozilla’s Calendar Project, rooted in open source, looks like the product that could put the profit in the for-profit Mozilla Foundation via a Google purchase.
Give Google credit for its developer services, as Louis noted how Google has mostly led in bringing new toys and APIs out for people to try out and even reimplement in new applications.
Is Google unique? Maybe not outside of search relevance, but they do create useful services, and singlehandedly drove every web-based email provider to stop being stingy with message storage space. Give them credit for at least making the Internet better in some ways.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
