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April 17, 2004
The Search Wars
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
One of the most foolish things that happened in the 1990s was that the search engine industry lost the plot and became the "portal" business.
This happened for one reason. The market got lazy. The profits from traffic -- any traffic -- were so high that companies like Yahoo, Excite, and Lycos decided to try and become like America Online rather than keep going what they were doing.
The portal wars weren't a demand from Internet consumers. They were a demand from Internet capitalists. The dot-bust, from that perspective, was a very good thing indeed.
But now, thanks to Google, it's game-on again. Amazon has launched a new search engine, Yahoo Search is brand-new, Microsoft is still planning a big announcement, and the rest of the industry is consolidating faster than Jell-O in a freezer.
Goodie.
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
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