Today is Danny Sullivan’s last day with Search Engine Watch. Tomorrow he begins work on his new venture Search Engine Land where he will continue to share his thoughts on Search with the help of some knowledgeable correspondents. Danny has been following, analyzing and critiquing the search industry before people realized its importance. In his farewell SEW post he points to My Decade of Writing About Search Engines, a timeline of his work that also serves as a timeline for the industry.
The past provides context for the present and thus it is crucial reading for anyone who’s business is affected by Search. As you can see from some of the highlights below the more things change, the more they stay the same.
- 1997 – The Alta Vista Size Controversy: The Google-Yahoo spat over index size in 2005 was only the latest in long standing issues over page counts.
- 1997 – Microsoft Planning Own Search Engine? &Microsoft To Launch Search Engine: Microsoft’s going to wipe out Google? Nine years ago, it was wondering if they were going to wipe out Yahoo, Open Text and others.
- 1998 – AltaVista Changes Direction: AltaVista decides belatedly to become a portal, leaving no one focused on search, a grand opportunity for Google.
- 1999 – Is The Lycos MP3 Index Legal?: Lycos quickly finds that offering MP3 search is an easy way to get sued; others take note, and decent music search has to wait until pricing models for purchase emerge.
- 2001 – Being Search Boxed To Death: Google and other search engines today are struggling with how to best tell people about the many vertical search results they have. It’s a long-standing problem, as this story looks at.
- 2002- Google: Can The Marcia Brady Of Search Stay Sweet?: A long look at whether Google’s growth and dominance makes it inevitable to send the company down a Microsoft-like path of being hated or feared.
Good luck Danny, Search Engine Land is going to be one of my daily reads.