So what’s going to happen in the online search industry? Here are my predictions:
Overture will buy Espotting who have the biggest market share in paid results in Europe.
Paid results and editorial results companies will merge. i.e. Overture will merge with either Inktomi or FAST.
The industry will be dominated by the above merger and Google, but Google will dominate.
Yahoo and Microsoft will use anyone but Google. i.e. Yahoo will look at an alternative to Google for editorial based search results.
Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Google will be the destination sites that matter. Because Google own one of these destination sites they will not be held to ransom by giving up too much revenue share in the same way that Inktomi, FAST and Overture are.