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Web 2.0 marks the decline of Ebay and Amazon March 26, 2007

Posted by ravimhatre in Consumer internet, Ecommerce, Internet, Lead gen, Search, start-up, web 2.0.
12 comments

Om Malik is on to an important trend in his recent post  regarding the marginalization of Ebay, Amazon and other legacy ecommerce marketplaces with the advent of e-commerce 2.0.  Given the emergence of new and better merchandising technologies, more intuitive and comprehensive product search services, and the proliferation of contextual and performance-based advertising channels,  small and mid-sized merchants are able to establish rapidly growing web outlets more easily than ever before. 

In the first generation of ecommerce,  marketplaces with recognizable consumer brands (like Ebay and Amazon)  could offer small and mid-sized merchants access to large pools of customers.   However, there was a significant premium charged for this access – usually 10 or more percent of the transaction price. Bear in mind that the typical merchant will have total gross margins of no more than 20-30 percent. 

Like many net-based ecosystems we’re now witnessing the emergence of an open environment to replace first generation “closed”  marketplaces or communities.  Instead of listing on Ebay or Amazon and relying on their brand to attract customers and their standardized merchandising and search to drive purchases, a merchant can now easily build a product website that will drive organic traffic from vertical and horizontal search engines picking up their unique product content and also utilize a variety of performance based advertising channels including comparision shopping lead-gen sites (the top 10 sites delivered over 100 Million shopping leads to merchants in January 2007)  as well as  search engine keyword marketing to acquire new customers.  These channels are less expensive and drive significantly more customers and purchases at higher margins than legacy marketplaces.  

From a VC perspective, we believe a key requirement to making this work is the emergence of next-generation product search services that tame the Internet’s infinite shelf-space and provide consumers with truly comprehensive product search results through an interface that is highly intuitive and digestable.  Several start-ups are intensely working to solve this problem such as TheFind (LSVP portfolio company) Become, and ShopWiki.  Let us know what you think of their services. 

Google CPA will crunch lead gen arbitrageurs margins further March 21, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in advertising, Consumer internet, Lead gen, Search, start-up, startups.
19 comments

Today’s release of Google’s Cost-Per-Action (CPA) beta has generated a lot of attention. Most are focusing on the impact on affiliate networks such as Commission Junction or Link Share as the test is currently confined to Adsense ads that show up on the Google Publisher Network.

I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next logical step is to have these CPA ads show up as Adwords next to Google’s search results.

This presents a direct and present threat to many lead gen businesses, especially those that rely on CPC to CPA arbitrage as their business. I posted on the future of lead gen in January, where I noted that, simplifying substantially, lead gen comprises three processes:

1. Acquiring traffic (e.g. from paid search, organic search, brand advertising, banner advertising, distribution deals etc).
2. Converting traffic to leads through a form-fill process
3. Finding the highest value for a lead among multiple buyers (ie having a network of advertisers and knowing who placed what value on each lead)

Google’s current beta will essentially eliminate the arbitrage opportunities in part one of this value chain. Companies driving the majority of their traffic from organic search and (long term) distribution deals will be less affected, as will those who add value to the process by qualifying users and directing them to the best matched vendors as leads. But those whose core competencies are in clever media buying will be pressured because a CPA model shifts the risk out of buying CPC and CPM media and converting to lead forms.

There are a large number of lead gen companies that have grown to over $100m in revenue. These have grown to their current size by being well managed, and building multiple sources of traffic and an efficient mechanism for matching leads to their highest value.

Smaller “mom and pop” lead gen shops that depending on buying traffic through banner advertising and CPC advertising to landing pages and selling these leads to a small network of buyers will find their margins under increasing pressure if their clients can disintermediate them through Google’s new products.

UPDATE: Some very insightful responses posted in comments that I will attempt to summarize as “you’re assuming more efficiency exists than actually does, thats why this will still create a lot of value”. Its a fair point. If you read this in RSS, its worth reading the comments.

Time Rich or Time Poor? March 19, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in Consumer internet, Ecommerce, Internet, Lead gen, Search, social networks, start-up, startups, user generated content, VC, Venture Capital, video, web 2.0.
62 comments

Broadly speaking, there are two types of internet users, Time Rich (more time than money) and Time Poor (more money than time). I’d speculate that many of the readers of this blog fall into the Time Poor category, but the vast majority of internet users fall into the Time Rich category. If you’re starting a new internet company, its important to know who your audience is, and to make sure that you don’t let your own experience and that of other Time Poor people guide you wrong.

Time Poor

Time Poor people use the internet to get things done. They are very task focused, and their favorite websites help them use their precious time more efficiently. Great examples of websites built for the Time Poor include search engines, first gen comparison shopping engines (trying to find the lowest price as quickly as possible), ecommerce and lead gen sites where the purchase is more functional than emotional, and many of the “social news” websites that filter the news for you.

If you’re building a website for the Time Poor, your focus should be to minimize their time and pages on site. As a result, business models around e-commerce, CPC and lead generation are good matches for these sort of site – it aligns both user and site around getting to a transaction as quicly as possible. Depending on what you do, you may even be able to charge a subscription as well.

Time Rich

Time Rich people use the internet to kill some time. They are bored. They are willing to be diverted and entertained. Great examples of websites built for the Time Rich include broad based social networks, targeted social networks, picture sharing sites, anything celebrity related, anything sports related, social shopping sites (recreational shopping), social discovery websites that suggest new sites to you, all video websites and causal games websites.

If you’re building a website for the Time Rich, your focus should be to give them options to explore. Links density is the name of the game – more links means more clicks. Suggest a next click at any natural pause point, and keep people clicking within your site. Stimulate communication and community – it keeps people engaged and coming back. Give people reasons to bookmark you and come back often with fresh content and evergreen favorites.

You’ll likely monetize through advertising – sponsorship and CPM as well as CPC. Subscriptions may work for you too if you have certain features held back. If the products you sell are bought spontaneously, then ecommerce may also work for you. But don’t fall into the trap of creating extra pageviews for your own benefit and not that of your user (e.g. by splitting articles across multiple pages, or creating extra steps in a process to edit a profile page) as your users will wise up to your game soon enough. Time Rich does not mean unsophisticated. Your users spend enough time on the internet, and on your competitors sites, to know what are the best practices.

Know your audience when you build your site, keep the target clear, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting their needs.

UPDATE: New visitors, if you liked this post try the second most popular post, Three Ways to Build an Online Media Business to $50m in revenue

New forms of advertising are hard February 19, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in advertising, Consumer internet, Digital Media, Internet, Lead gen, Search, start-up, startups, web 2.0.
25 comments

I’ve seen a few startups recently that are relying on launching a new form of advertising as their business model. These can include product placements, sponsorships of various flavors, new forms of local advertising, interactive out-of-home advertising, and lots of variations of mobile advertising. This is a hard business. If successful, it can be very, very successful (e.g. Overture/Google with sponsored links in search) but entrepreneurs often underestimate how long it will take for revenues to ramp.

To understand how new forms of advertising get adopted, you need to understand how advertising is bought today. In most instances, ad agencies control the ad budgets for the largest advertisers in the world. Within those ad agencies, one of the functions is media buying. A media buyer’s role is to optimize reach (and sometimes quality of audience) for their client across all possible advertising channels. The problem with new forms of advertising is that they are often not represented in the media buyers’ spreadsheets and models. And if it’s not in the model, it doesn’t get allocated any ad spend.

Startups sometimes get traction with a new form of advertising because there are always some forward thinking advertiers who are willing to experiment. This early traction is often a customized program negotiated with an advertiser that is friendly with the startup through personal relationships. However, crossing over from a “business development” focused model (where each new deal is custom crafted) to an “ad sales” focused model (where standardized products are sold off of a rate card) is the key to massive scalability of revenues. To do this you need to get into the media buying model; you need to sell a standardized product.

For internet companies, that usually means that you need to get the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) to issue a new “Standard” ad unit, in much the same way that the IAB issued its first set of “voluntary guidelines” that set up 8 standard banner ad units in 1996, a massive reduction from the over 150 ad sizes that were in use at the time. This standardization greatly eases logistical complexity for both advertiers and media companies.

The process of creating a new standard can be quite a lengthy one. It usually involves a coalition of both media companies and advertisers coming together and negotiating the key elements of the standard. The composition of the IAB board is usually dominated by larger online media companies and it can be hard for a startup to have much influence on this decision making process. It can often be easier to align youself with the interests of a larger media company and let them carry the water up the hill, rather than trying to do it independantly as a startup. If you’re Dogster, you’ll have less success pushing a new standard for “sponsored profiles” than MySpace/FIM or AIMpages/AOL. So making sure that your sponsored profiles packages contain the same elements as those of the big guys will make your life easier as they take this new ad unit through the standardization process

The alternative approach is to make sure that your new form of advertising so closely parallels an existing standard ad unit that it can be considered within the existing bucket. 30 second online video ads (same format as TV),online leads (similar to phone leads) and new variations of CPC advertising (similar to search) have all been “close enough” to an existing ad unit that they have been able to tap existing ad budgets and grow quickly.

In either case, when building business plans on the assumption of the adoption of new ad units, make sure you give yourself enough time in your plans for the market to be created before it can grow to scale.

Useable Health Vertical Search February 16, 2007

Posted by ravimhatre in Consumer internet, Entrepreneur, Internet, Search, start-up, web 2.0.
2 comments

There was a TechCrunch post today regarding a new search service from Healthline called Symptom Search which attempts to provide an information service suggesting common illnesses related to symptoms that a user is experiencing.

Symptom Search is a great idea. The challenge is to acheive comprehensiveness such that typical symptoms are accurately and completely mapped (in relevant order) to all possible diseases and vice versa.

Just for fun, I tried a couple of not uncommon symptom searches related to actual problems people I know have experienced recently. For example, one person I know experienced chronic tendonitis in reaction to being treated with Cipro. Unfortunately there were no results in Symptom Search that relate these two subjects.

I also had a recent experience with someone who experienced sudden hearing loss as the result of an ear infection however the system was not able to correlate the two and didn’t serve any relevant information.

Health information search is a technically challenging problem and one I believe requires a search metaphor and deep technology to address in a way that is meaningfull to the consumer. See my previous Lightpseed blog post about Vertical Search as a way to better address these types of research oriented searches.

Also, try the following two searches on the Kosmix Health Search portal (full disclosure, Lightpseed is an investor).

http://www.kosm…ro_tendonitis-s

http://www.kosm…ar_infection-s?

I typed in simple search requests such as “Sudden Hearing Loss” and “Cipro Tendonitis” and got back a wealth of topics and articles that linked these symptoms to their underlying causes and also to potential treatments and doctors.

Health Vertical Search is a challenging problem but one, if well solved, that could yield substantial consumer benefits as well as create a company of significant value.

A play about success in consumer technology, in three acts February 6, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in Consumer internet, Ecommerce, Lead gen, Search, social networks, startups, user generated content, viral, viral marketing, web 2.0, widgets.
11 comments

I’ve previously posted on the importance of distribution during the initial phase of a startups life. To be more accurate, I think that distribution is the most important factor for a consumer facing company competing in a new category.

However, I think that this is just the first act of a three act play, with a different factor being critical to success in each act.

ACT ONE: DISTRIBUTION

To summarize the earlier post; early in a category’s lifecycle, users don’t recognize that they have a particular need/problem. They don’t recognize that a category exists and so there is no demand pull. If even your own mother doesn’t know what it is you do; ESPECIALLY if your own mother doesn’t know what it is you do, then you likely face this problem!

Having the best product is neither necessary nor sufficient. Having a decent product is good enough.

You need to get to users as they won’t get to you. Hence the importance of distribution. Read the original post for flavors of distribution and how to get them, plus examples.

ACT TWO: PRODUCT

Over time, categories become established in the minds of consumers. In the case of online travel agencies it took about 3-5 years. In the case of user generated video, it took only 12-18 months. Consumers start to understand who the competitors are in an industry. If switching costs are low (as they are in both online travel agencies and user generated video), users often sample the offerings from multiple competitors. At this stage, assuming that you have done enough to get into the consideration set, product and user experience matters a lot. Distribution has become the ante, and the companies that win will win on the best product.

Having the best product means much more than having the most checks in a feature comparison matrix. It goes far beyond the technology. It can mean having the best prices, the best selection/range, the best customer service or the best community. In the early days of online travel Travelocity won on distribution through its deals with AOL and Yahoo! But once the category became established in people’s minds, Expedia slowly took market share from Travelocity on the back of a better overall user experience, one important factor being better pricing (mostly hotel pricing). [Update: Note comments below from Rich Barton, founding CEO of Expedia, on his view of why Expedia overtook Travelocity.]

Similarly, many user generated video sites claim better features than Youtube, yet Youtube never lost its lead because it had the biggest range of content (and the biggest audience for people looking to upload videos). As technologists we can fall into the trap of defining “best product” too narrowly, but our customers are not technologists and they look at the whole experience.

ACT THREE: BRANDING

As a category continues to mature, it becomes harder to maintain product differentiation. There are some exceptions; when there are positive network effects an early leader like Ebay or Youtube can often hold their leads. But if the advantages built in Act Two stem from technology, process or supply advantages, these often get whittled away as competitors copy, innovate and partner to make up lost ground. At this stage of a category’s evolution, branding is the most important factor and product has become the ante once again. (Note that I distinguish here between branding and marketing. Online marketing that is more direct response (CPC or CPA) in nature is really more a form of distribution.)

Google is sometimes presented as the canonical example of the best technology winning over time. However, as I mention in the post on distribution, Google‘s traffic only really started to climb after its distribution deals with Y! and AOL. It really did pull away from the other search engines on the basis of its better product during Act Two. But today, its not at all clear that its search results are that much better than anyone elses.

When I was at AOL a couple of years ago, we used to test search relevance from multiple engines by taking the results from all the major search engines, stripping all branding and UI, and showing the lists to users who scored the quality of the search returns. The results were surprising – all the search engines were very close to each other in relevance, with variations as to who was “best” from month to month and search term to search term. Interestingly enough, when you put the branding and UI back in, the users always rated
Google as having the best search results.

Google‘s dominant brand is now what enables it to hold and grow its search market share. And in mature categories such as online travel, you see the big players compete purely on branding ads.

In some categories, branding never matters and we never reach Act three. If your users are unlikely to transaction with you more than once (say you sell rowing machines or curio cabinets) then your category will likely never develop beyond Act One. But if you’re in a category with repeat users, whether books, DVD rentals, online auctions, or shoes, branding matters.

CONCLUSION

Distribution, product and branding, all are critical but at different times. Making sure you focus on the right factor at the right stage in the evolution of your category can help you make sure you’re fighting the next war, not the last one.

Failure IS an option January 24, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in browsers, Consumer internet, Digital Media, Search, startups, Venture Capital, video, web 2.0, widgets.
47 comments

There have been a lot of posts on startups laying people off, losing founders or closing down in the last couple of months, part of the natural cycle in the valley. But what has disturbed me has been some of the mean spirited things that have been left in the comments to some of those postings. Often anonymously. It really bothers me. People can (and do!) reasonably disagree about a company’s business plan and prospects, but some of this stuff is just over the top.

The great thing about Silicon Valley has been the entrepreneurial culture, and the acceptance that working for a failed startup is not necessarily a judgement on your character or your ability. But recently there seems to have been a change in attitudes at least amongst some people (trolls?) who are taking joy in the misfortune of others. When a startup closes down, founder’s dreams die. Employees find themselves looking for work, and at least for a period, worrying about paying their bills and supporting their families. This should never be a cause for celebration.

I don’t personally know the teams at Backfence or Peerflix or FilmLoop, or Bitpass, or Findory, or Browster or many of the other companies that have recently entered Techcrunch’s deadpool recently, but I think that they are to be applauded for their willingness to take a chance on starting a company, not condemned because that particular company wasn’t successful.

Companies die, founders and employees learn from the experience and move on, and hopefully start more companies. I for one would love to see the second acts from the teams that are newly freed up.

Update: Hot or Not founder James Hong has a good related post.

The new “must see tv”… January 12, 2007

Posted by pchiang in Consumer internet, Digital Media, Search, startups, Venture Capital, video.
2 comments

On Wednesday, Yahoo! and Akimbo announced a new partnership to bring the most popular selections of Yahoo! Video to the Akimbo video-on-demand service. This announcement comes on the heels of the launch of Apple TV, a set top box that wirelessly transfers digital media from user’s computers to their TVs. Both announcements highlight, the increasing convergence of video platforms. As Jeremy points out in his “2007 Consumer Internet Predictions”, time spent consuming videos both online and on the TV are increasing. Not only are people watching more videos than before but they are also watching videos in many more ways. Television/video viewer behavior is in the middle of an evolution.

A number of factors are driving this change:

1) There is the increasing adoption of TV/video technologies such as digital video recorders, video on demand and video downloads/streaming, not to mention Apple TV and iTunes/iPods. According to Forrestor, “DVRs have entered the hypergrowth phase, reaching more than 13 million households, including 17% of digital cable subscribers and 19% of satellite subscribers. DVRs will surpass 50% of homes within four years.” DVRs and the other technologies are enabling the “time shifting” of programs, the skipping of commercials and the ability to consume videos in smaller chunks and in different locations.

2) Decreasing costs of bandwidth and storage are removing the economic and practical barriers of having and distributing videos for both content owners and consumers. Broadband is dramatically improving the user experience of watching streamed videos. Peer-to-peer networks only increase the ease of distribution and access.

3) As everyone knows, alternative video platforms such as YouTube and other streaming videos sites (NBC Rewind, CBS Innertube, ABC.com, Fox On Demand…) are proliferating. The major studios saw what happened to the music industry and are trying to find ways in which they may embrace these changes without losing control over their assets. They are making more and more content available on their online destination sites and iTunes. For the consumer, this equates to more types of content and in more places.

These fundamental changes in the way people can watch videos are shifting mindsets to an “on demand” mentality. People are becoming the programmers of their own personal television network, dictating what they want to watch and when they want to watch it.

In recognizing this shift, two areas of opportunity come to mind.

1) Search/navigation/discovery of content. With so much content coming from so many different sources, the networks and cable channels are no longer the ones telling you what you “must see TV” is. Interesting content can now come from anywhere. However, more video options mean more videos to sort through to find something of interest. Some companies such as Blinkx and CastTV address the problem through improved video search relevancy. While others, such as CozmoTV and StumbleVideo, focus on video discovery through the votes of the community of users. Convergence of platforms and media types only promises more complication.

2) New advertising models that will capitalize on these shifts. As many people have predicted, TV advertisers will to continue to see their 15 and 30 second commercials go increasingly unwatched. Brand advertisers, who spend the $60B a year on television advertising, will still need to find a way to reach their target consumers. Advertisers still don’t seem comfortable associated their brands with the unpredictability of user generated content. While I agree with Jeremy’s assessment that the shift will take time, this advertising budget will go to new ad models that reach consumers in a more targeted and relevant way. One such model is that of broadband television networks, such as Revision3, which produces serialized content targeted towards specific interest groups at a fraction of the cost of mainstream television programs. Brand sponsorships are embedded into the programming itself and can be targeted toward the specific demographic of the show. Revision3 makes their content distribution platform neutral, allowing users to choose how and where they watch each episode.

These are only a few of the many new models bubbling up. I believe there will many opportunities for entrepreneurs who understand the evolution in user behavior and recognize the power of the different players in the value chain.

Lead gen is dead. Long live lead gen January 8, 2007

Posted by jeremyliew in Consumer internet, Ecommerce, Lead gen, Search, startups.
13 comments

There has been some vigorous comment discussion on the post of 2007 consumer internet predictions, mostly about the lead gen prediction. Firstly, its wonderful to get comments – thank you. When you first start blogging it feels like shouting out a window into the darkness; you’re not really sure if anyone is out there, listening. It’s good to know that I’m not just talking to myself!

On to lead gen. There were two broad schools of thought on the state of lead gen. One is epitomized by a Jason Calacanis’ comment which, while lacking in detail, none the less crisply conveys his opinion of the industry and those who work in it.

Lead generation is dead. Companies would really be foolish to start a new leadgen company – especially NOW. Geesh.

Others shared more detail, and see a troubling situation as the arbitrage opportunities between buying CPC advertising and selling leads dry up. The markets, both in paid search and in remnant banner advertising, have become more efficient, squeezing margins for lead gen companies.

Yet others are more optimistic. Langley Steinert (co-founder of TripAdvisor, now CEO of Cargurus.com, and one of the pioneers of lead generation) believes that advertisers would much prefer to pay for leads, and others agree, although sometimes with reservations about if this is in the long term interest of the lead buyers

How can we reconcile some of these positions?

Simplifying substantially, lead gen comprises three processes:

1. Acquiring traffic (e.g. from paid search, organic search, brand advertising, banner advertising, distribution deals etc).
2. Converting traffic to leads through a form-fill process
3. Finding the highest value for a lead among multiple buyers (ie having a network of advertisers and knowing who placed what value on each lead)

Historically, most lead gen companies have been vertically integrated, doing all three processes. Also, historically, lead gen has been focused on a small number of industries, including mortgage lending (including refi, and home equity), consumer credit (including credit cards, educational lending, auto loans), new auto sales and online education.

In these industries, I think it’s fair to say that margins are shrinking and that competition is growing fiercer. The market, while not perfect, is becoming a lot more efficient. Some companies have established a competitive advantage in process #1 by locking in traffic either from organic search, from long term distribution deals, or by having established branded destinations (e.g. Lending Tree). Others have established a competitive advantage in process #3 through the breadth of their buyer network (e.g. Autobytel). Entering these markets today is going to be a tough road to hoe.

As I said in my prior post, I think we’ll see similar principles applied in other categories that also have high customer value, can sustain a sales person’s costs, are infrequent purchases by consumers and have complexity in the decision making process. Possibilities include wedding photography, plastic surgery, LASIK, cosmetic dentistry, eldercare, even business purchases. These categories still allow arbitrage opportunities between CPC advertising and lead gen as they are still inefficient. However, they will also become efficient over time, and long term winners will need to establish competitive advantage in processes #1 and #2 as outlined above.

Interestingly enough, some companies, notably Leadpoint and Root Exchange, are trying to commoditize process #3 by establishing a “marketplace” for buyers and sellers of leads to efficiently find each other (taking a cut of the transaction in the process). If they are successful in doing this in the newer lead gen markets, they will serve to accelerate the margin compression and force successful lead gen companies to focus on the three elements of traffic acquisition that can sustain arbitrage: organic search traffic, branded destination traffic and long term distribution relationships.

It will be interesting to see how this industry plays out. Comments and thoughts, especially from industry practitioners, most welcome.

UPDATE: Some very interesting comments posted – worth reading if you are only getting a feed

Is Google unassailable? If so, Why are VCs chasing search? January 5, 2007

Posted by ravimhatre in Consumer internet, Search, startups, Venture Capital.
3 comments

Several recent articles (NYT, Richard MacManus, etc) on next generation search and the questionable wisdom of backing businesses with a mission to displace some or all of Google’s current market domain caused us to do some of our own reflection.

Not only is Google tremendously good at what they do, in less than 10 years they’ve established a consumer brand with iconography to rival the likes of Nike’s famed athletic swoosh or Coca Cola’s signature “wave” heralding the onset of good times. Google’s navigational search delivers tremendous value when consumers know what they are looking for. Its unlikely we’ll witness the demise of this offering anytime soon.

However, there are many instances where a minimalist approach to search results simply can’t deliver what the user wants because the user doesnt know what he or she wants.

For example, I had a friend who recently contracted SSHL, a termporary hearing loss condition. I needed information. My search on Google yielded a hodgepodge of linear page results, most of which had nothing to do with the medical condition. My search on Kosmix (Lightspeed portfolio company), a category-based search engine, provided well organized, relevant results and suggested specific symptoms, treatments, medications, best hospitals, and other relevant directional tips to guide me through my discovery process. Similarly, when I was looking for post-holiday sales on Espresso Machines, I found Google’s answer to be virtually unintelligable versus the clean array of choices yielded by TheFind.

While Google has a dominant brand and will continue to be a “start-point” for many navigational searches, there are a variety situations where the answer to a user’s query doesn’t reside on the top page of links from a Google search results deck.

There in lies the opportunity. While there are challenges for start-ups in developing the right distribution channels and content syndication partnerships to scale up traffic and consumer mindshare, if the quality of vertical search experience can consistently create “aha” moments for the consumer it will yeild market opportunity.

As previous articles have noted, its not a matter of out-Googling, Google. More likely, it will be about identifying segments of search where consumers need more than a traditional page of linear result links to easily answer their information request. Over time, it doesn’t make that sense one size will fit all. Google may evolve and adapt to this segmented notion, but they will be required to learn the same lessons and develop similar alternative approaches to those of many start-ups that have already begun the process of search disaggregation.