quote:Today\'s search engine oligopoly could soon be a monopoly and a single search engine company would control nearly all web searches for its commercial gain. That would not be good for Internet users and webmasters. The author of that blurb would do well to read about the economic law of increasing returns, path dependence and other good stuff they are investigating at the Santa Fe Institute. Some interesting links that might bring this chap back to reality:
The More You Sell, the More You Sell
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/arthur.htmlBrian Arthur:
http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/index.htmlIncreasing Returns and Path Dependence
(pdf)
http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/Papers/Pdf_files/HBR.pdf(doc)
http://www.santafe.edu/arthur/Papers/Pdf_files/HBR.docLet\'s face it, there is only so much time and effort that you are willing to invest in any activity and search engines are no different. If Google brings you more than half your traffic you are going to pamper Google and the other search engines, the ones that bring you one or two percent, cannot expect people to optimize their pages for them. There is not sufficient return on the investment.
Let me give you an example from directories. Some of them give you the alternative to pay or become an editor. No way Jose! At least not for me. Why? Because my time is way too valuable to work for an hour just for a link. I might as well pay them and I have already decided that the 20 or 30 bucks they charge are not worth it. BTW, the people at Yahoo Directory must be smoking some sublime stuff.
This is not to discourage people from trying but it is always a good idea to know what it is that you are really up against. You are not up against some nasty monopolists. You are up against some fact of economic life. Companies like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco and IBM didn\'t grow that large by chance. Neither did Amazon, eBay, or Google.
