death of the search startup

The Death of the Search StartupMark Johnson (@philosophygeek)Bing Lead Program Manager

Search Startups are Dead“After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for

centuries in a cave – a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for

thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we – we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.”

- Nietzsche, Der Fröhliche Wissenschaft

∑ ≠

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Standard Disclaimer

The numbers that you are about to see are the opinion of the author and calculated using speculative

(but informed by experience) numbers pulled out of his ass. There are probably numerous cases of over- and under-estimation, but I’m not trying to create a

definitive “cost of a search engine.” What I’m trying to do is to give you ammunition to call bullshit on any entrepreneur who tells you he can build a full-scale, general-purpose search engine for under $100M. My employer, Microsoft,

was not involved in the creation of any of the following dubious dollar values.

An Equation

Ĵ� (SC+ Rel + RT) + (P* t) = [a number too big to invest in]๏Ĵ� = Ĵohnson coefficient๏SC = Storage/Crawling๏Rel = Relevance๏RT = Runtime ๏P = People๏t = Time (in years)

Hardware People

The Web is big

It’s (even) bigger than you think

Freshness: Things change quickly

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Serving relevant results

Out with the bad

And then all the other stuff

Speed is everything

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Divide and conquer

* The Johnson CoefficientĴ�

People

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Adding it all up Ĵ� (SC+ Rel + RT) + (P* t) = $100M on the lower end>$300M on the high end

Case Study 1: SearchMe

Case Study 2: Powerset

Keep Hope Alive

The Moral of the Story

[ don’t invest in general purpose search engines ]

Thanks![Follow me on Twitter: @philosophygeek]

[Blog post to follow: deliberateambiguity.typepad.com

[Comments welcome/encouraged: mark.n.johnson@microsoft.com]