Whilst there may be a large opportunity to capitalize on the consumer search experience through vertical search "portals", is there a real business model for an industry where Google effectively monopolizes the market, and in the blink of an eye, can overwhelm existing vertical players by deciding to enter the vertical search fray? Just think Microsoft, minus the "we try not to piss too many companies off so they will still continue building applications on Windows".

Well, ok. If companies attempt to emulate Google, but in a industry/vertical-specific way, they certainly are vulnerable to inroads by Google, but if

  • a company can gain significant mindshare as market leader
  • the vertical lends itself to communities and/or requires significant effort which cannot be easily emulated without diluting Google's focus of being a search company

then maybe there is alot of money to be made.

Still, I'd like to pull your attention back to the portal heyday (think Yahoo!, Altavista, MSN). If you were around in those days, you'll remember how much hype there was around "vortals", or vertical portals. Well, what's happened to them? Are they still around, just that the terms vortals and portals have fallen out of favour with VCs?

Comments Off on Vertical searching