Has the window of opportunity for search engines finally closed? The giants of personal computing are making decisive inroads on the territory traditionally enjoyed by companies such as Lycos Inc and Excite Inc. Last week Apple Computer Corp interim CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated the new Sherlock tool in Mac OS 8.5. Like Metacrawler, this feature can poll a number of internet search engines and compile and rank the results. Now Microsoft Corp has unveiled the beta version of MSN Internet Search, based on OEM technology by Inktomi Inc. Not only does Microsoft charge Lycos and Excite to be featured on its MSN Internet Start page, it will now be hawking a competing product. Expect the search engines to be less than thrilled at the prospect. After all, unlike its pure portal competitors, Microsoft can afford to run all its web sites at a loss for an indefinite period. Speaking at the European IT Forum in Paris on Tuesday, Bill Gates said that a few of his company’s content properties had finally begun to break even, but that the few hundred thousand dollars they made were insignificant in the grand Microsoft scheme of things. Cold comfort indeed for the search engine startups, and for their investors. รก
