Alta Vista

Search Engine Wars Redux

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Friends,

Readers who speak Speak Spanish or Portuguese will know that “Alta Vista” means the view from above - or colloquially, “overview”. Readers who made it through the dot com boom in tech at the tail end of the last century will also know that Alta Vista was one of the players in the search engine wars. Launched by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in December 1995, AltaVista became one of the first popular search engines due to its advanced technology and ability to return relevant results faster than competitors. Despite early success, AltaVista ultimately failed to maintain its dominance for several reasons. DEC was acquired by Compaq in 1998, which disrupted AltaVista's development as it lost its importance within a larger organisation. It also turned into a messy portal making it difficult to use.

In the search engine wars of the 90s and noughties, many cite Yahoo as having strategic missteps. Indeed, they were the worst of them all. They failed to acquire Google twice - and the rest is history. But why do I mention Alta Vista? Because at the time, Alta Vista had both the best indexer and crawler. I thought it was an obvious winner - at the time.

We all know that Google won the search game. Its winning combination of focus, clean UI, PageRank methodology, speed, culture, talent and a bunch of other factors shot Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek, AskJeeves and Excite down. [I’m sure there were more, but my mind is rusty!]

We are now entering Search Engine Wars Redux - and it’s a whole different game. The current players are:

• OpenAI who announced this week ChatGPT Search showcasing its internet search capabilities using a fine-tuned AI model, aiming for an integrated approach within ChatGPT.

• Perplexity has already gone all in with trying to unseat Google highlighting its unique multi-model approach, emphasising the combination of models to improve search. However, according to the Flexos report linked below, even though Perplexity shows real signs of becoming “the new Google,” it isn’t yet competing on the same scale as Google. In fact, Perplexity’s usage is less than 0.1% of Google’s volume. You have to start somewhere.

• Google uses a custom pipeline specifically for creating AI summaries, leaning on its experience with data processing. Google’s AI search summaries are rolling out to over 100 more countries as announced this week

• Microsoft has incorporated AI in Bing search long ago, positioning itself as an early adopter of AI-enhanced search. They did this in 2023, but it hasn’t really taken much share away from Google.

• Anthropic is notably silent, implying it may be developing a novel approach or waiting to unveil something transformative. After its latest deployment of being able to use your computer, who knows what the approach might be?

• Meta is working on an AI-powered search engine to decrease its dependence on Google and Microsoft - and we know that they have been crawling the web for month.

The current AI search competition reminds me of the competition now nearly 30 years ago where innovation and user experience were critical to winning. However, the integration of AI introduces complexities such as real-time data processing and conversational interfaces, setting this era apart. We saw the strategic missteps last time and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

I wonder if there is a play whereby Perplexity is acquired by one of the larger players or indeed partners up with DuckDuckGo. I’m also interested to see what might happen in local markets, especially with Baidu.

Why is this important? The battle for dominance in the search engine world is more than a corporate tussle over market share; it’s a power struggle for control over how billions of people access, interpret, and act on information.

Firstly, whoever controls search engines controls the flow of information. Search engines are the front door to the internet, dictating what’s visible to us with each query. These companies have an unparalleled influence on what we see and believe, shaping opinions on everything from breaking news to political viewpoints and scientific understanding.

There’s also money—and shareholders will want returns. Search-based advertising has turned companies like Google into giants, raking in billions. The economic stakes are monumental, and the search engine wars are a competition for these profits. To gain an edge, companies are pouring resources into innovation. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, product management and data science are being pushed at all of these companies as search engines race to deliver faster, smarter, more relevant results.

But with this power comes responsibility—and scrutiny. Search engines rely on collecting vast amounts of user data to tailor results, a practice under increasing regulatory pressure. Google, for instance, continually tweaks its data policies amid privacy concerns, while challengers like DuckDuckGo attract users with their commitment to anonymity. These companies are walking an ethical tightrope between delivering tailored results and respecting user privacy—a balance made even more delicate by the recent wave of data privacy legislation, released by the EU and in the US.

It’s also an economic matter that ripples far beyond Silicon Valley. Search engines are essential for businesses of every type, especially those in e-commerce and digital marketing. A tweak to Google’s algorithm can have a huge effect on companies that depend on search traffic for survival. Search engine giants hold the power to make or break businesses—effectively controlling aspects of the economy.

And there’s a geopolitical dimension. In regions like China, where Baidu reigns supreme behind the country’s "Great Firewall," the search engine wars intersect with national control over information. I’m sure that governments all over the world are watching these developments closely, underscoring how the competition over search is increasingly a global affair with significant stakes.

These new search engine wars are about far more than clicks and profits - they’re about who controls our digital reality, the economy, our psyche and even our political landscapes. As AI reshapes this landscape yet again, these companies face immense responsibility to navigate these challenges in ways that reflect the growing power they wield over society. And as we ponder what this means for us, we view the alta vista and continue to our new world.

Stay Curious - and don’t forget to be amazing,

Rahim

Here are my recommendations for this week:

One of the best tools to provide excellent reading and articles for your week is Refind. It’s a great tool for keeping ahead with “brain food” relevant to you and providing serendipity for some excellent articles that you may have missed. You can dip in and sign up for weekly, daily or something in between -what’s guaranteed is that the algorithm sends you only the best articles in your chosen area. It’s also free. Highly recommended Sign up.

Now

1. We are in uncertain times: The focus of strategic thinking in business will need to shift over the coming years. Also: It’s time to think long term and Our best friends are no longer human. Also: A reminder: To be human in a world of AI means embracing our capacity for empathy, creativity, and critical thinking—qualities that machines, for all their computational power, cannot replicate. While AI can amplify our abilities, our curiosity, intuition, and sense of purpose remain vital as we guide technology for the benefit of all.

2. Life Trends 2025 - A window into people's behaviours and attitudes to the world around them, including business, technology and societal shifts. This year, five emerging trends explore the cost of hesitations as people go after a healthier, more balanced relationship with technology—for themselves and for the next generation.

3. This Is Your Body on Sugar: Excessive added sugar, now common in processed foods and drinks, can harm various parts of the body, including increasing cavities, digestive issues, insulin resistance (leading to Type 2 diabetes), and altering the brain’s reward system, which fuels cravings. It also burdens the liver, potentially causing fatty liver disease, and contributes to obesity, heart disease, and gout due to visceral fat and uric acid buildup. Health guidelines recommend limiting added sugar to 10% of daily calories, though average intake often exceeds this, raising chronic health risks over time.

4. LinkedIn launches its first AI agent to take on the role of job recruiters: LinkedIn, the social platform used by professionals to connect with others in their field, hunt for jobs, and develop skills, is taking the wraps off its latest effort to build artificial intelligence tools for users. Hiring Assistant is a new product designed to take on a wide array of recruitment tasks, from ingesting scrappy notes and thoughts to turn into longer job descriptions to sourcing candidates and engaging with them. Also: AI vs AI in the Recruitment conundrum and Ghost jobs

5. NYT - Top 50 Recipes over 10 years. Hungry?

Next

1. Night of the zombie insects: A parasitic fungus takes over the brains of flies and controls them for its own sinister ends. Here’s the science behind the horror.

2. The AI for Work Top 100: October 2024: Perplexity continues to gain users despite recent controversies. Five out of six GPTs see traffic boosts. This month’s highest gainers including Gamma, Blackbox, Runway, and more.

3. Meta’s AI Abundance - Ben Thompson argues that Meta is uniquely positioned to leverage generative AI, not only to enhance its advertising capabilities but also to dominate the digital content ecosystem. Despite investor concerns over its spending and long-term metaverse strategy, Thompson sees Meta as resilient ("anti-fragile") and increasingly efficient, especially since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) forced Meta to adapt and innovate. Meta’s use of generative AI enables highly targeted, data-driven advertising and personalized content, increasing ad effectiveness and revenue. Additionally, Meta’s advancements in AI could extend its dominance into new areas, such as AI-driven e-commerce and augmented reality, positioning it to thrive in an era of infinite content.

4. The fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor called Loops: Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration with ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and other federated apps.

5. AI And Cucumbers: The Amazing Ways Kraft Heinz Is Using Artificial Intelligence - At the heart of Kraft Heinz's AI strategy is a "self-driving supply chain." This ambitious project aims to create an anti-fragile supply chain that can adapt to disruptions in real time. "We have a lot of digital tools in every part of a supply chain,". "That transactional data is coming up to our cloud system, and we have our Kraft Heinz Lighthouse that sits on top of all this transactional data and really gives us visibility from farm to fork of our entire supply chain."

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