I had a fascinating breakfast discussion with Jonathan Hochman from Hochman Consultants on Friday about Google's market dominance and the potential roads that might eventually lead to their fall. In our quest for potential Google-killers, we came across four likely candidates for bringing balance back to the search world (if not ending Google's reign entirely). They include:

#1 - An Existing Search Competitor Wins Back Share

In this scenario, Microsoft, Yahoo!, or Ask manages to overtake Google's relevance and mindshare through higher quality results or better branding and emotional appeal. While this seems unlikely, Google's own rise followed this storyline very closely. Altavista and several other engines held a firm grasp on the market in the late '90's and into 2000, but Google's technology, interface, and appeal caught up, then overtook and eventually dominated the search market. The difference here is that a startup achieved the market leader position - there aren't many examples in the Internet field where an existing player has snapped victory from the jaws of defeat.

In order to have one of the major competitors win back hearts and minds, it's my opinion that much more than better results are required. A more intuitive, compelling interface and massive support from both tech-geeks (who helped Google succeed in their launch) and the mainstream media would be critical.

One more quick note - a search competitor like Baidu or Yandex (the market winners in China and Russia, respectively) might also be dangerous for Google as other markets become more important players in the world economy.

#2 - A Startup Becomes the New Golden Child of Search

To some, particularly those brave venture capitalists behind projects like Wikia, Powerset, Cuill, and Mahalo, this option seems far more likely. As with Google's rise to power 9 years ago, the new player would need better technology, a grasp for what the Internet population wants (recall that in the late '90's it was Google's "clean interface" that captured attention), and the media's loving adoration. The startup would also need to avoid acquisition, which may be far easier said than done, since Google's cash reserves and willingness to buy small firms to add to their search technology will always be a factor. You'd need to find a financier who's willing to forgo an exit in the hundreds of millions or low billions for the possibility of reaching an IPO stage (and even then, a Google buyout through stock would be possible).

A more likely scenario might be that the startup gets acquired by another major company (perhaps even someone traditionally outside of web search, like Nokia or IBM), and then begins their meteoric rise.

#3 - Web Search Fractures into Verticals

As the web becomes increasingly large and complex, it's very possible that web surfing and web searching habits will evolve. Brands like Expedia, Zillow, and iMedix are all competing in the arenas of vertical search, hoping that when web users think travel, real estate, or health care, they won't turn to Google, but instead will go directly to their favorite vertical engine. Naturally, Google's already planning for this with search in dozens of additional verticals - news, books, academia, images, maps, etc., but beating the search giant in any one of these niches is certainly far simpler than in the broader realm of web wide search.

#4 - Traditional Web Search is Replaced by a More Compelling Information Retrieval Model

Remember that article on "zooming vs. searching" and how we humans are made for the former, not the latter? A true paradigm shift in the way human-computer interaction functions could spur a revolution against text-based Google and into the next generation of Internet use, powered by a completely different kind of entity (someone who might not be on Google's "search competitors" radar). It sounds far out and a little sci-fi, but since I can instantly calculate my position on the globe in 30 seconds and find the nearest bank by talking into a device I carry in my pocket, I'd say that a lot of sci-fi is already sci-fact. :)

We also considered a 5th option, but I personally think it's slightly less viable than the rest...

#5 - Spam Makes Google Irrelevant

Jonathan brought up the concept that Google might drown under a cloud of irrelevancy due to a leap in spam and manipulation technology. Certainly the cat and mouse game Google has waged with black hats over the years have produced plenty of poor search experiences and even the occasional PR nightmare, but I believe that even if Google's algorithms couldn't keep up in an automated sense, Google now has the power and the funding to preserve their position through sheer manpower - using human classifiers to root out any massive increase in spam in the short term while engineers found ways to pattern-detect them away. I've always felt that betting against the PhDs & spam researchers at Google was, in the long-term, a losing proposition. It's also tough for me to picture Google being uniquely affected by an increase in spam without all of the engines taking a hit (or maybe this would be when Ask's local popularity algorithm would shine).

And now it's time for your opinion:

I'd love to hear, as always, if you see other ways Google might fall from dominance.

BTW - I'm out of town until Wednesday, so email and the blog will be a bit slower than usal.