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Two fresh challenges have been set before Google this week as rivals push themselves to tackle the internet behemoth.Google is phenomenally good at search; so good that it currently controls 90 per cent of the market share. Microsoft Live Search has ironically been rather lost in the search sector, so the company’s bigger, better, smarter “Decision Engine” Bing hopes to re-energise its flagging position.
Earlier this week, start-up Internet Advertising company OpenX set out its intentions to take on Google in the online advertising market. Google’s AdWords and DoubleClick hold a commanding presence in digital advertising, but OpenX has managed to grow an impressive network of some 150,000 websites displaying 300 billion advertising impressions each month.
OpenX managed to secure an additional $10 million of funding from venture capital sources this week. The injection of fresh funds into the company from the likes of DAG Ventures, Accel Partners and Index Ventures is a pledge of support for OpenX to wage the war against Google. OpenX is now roughly the same size as DoubleClick, and expects aggressive expansion over the next few years.
Microsoft’s challenge is all the more daunting. The company is certainly not naive enough to believe that Bing will sweep Google away in one almighty torrent, but if it can capture two or three per cent of the search market away from Google then Microsoft would be happy.
What Bing has in its favour is that searches are simple, refined and offer relevant content, as opposed to a host of web directories. Google’s array of information is certainly impressive, but it can be overwhelming, and Bing’s stripping of the unnecessary, could be the key to its success.
Online Advertising news posted by Benny Henson on 29 May 2009
