Google Competitors

Not so long ago, on December 21, 2005, I wrote about the European and the Japanese Google competitors – and now I read on the news about another such group that the Norwegians are organizing. As I already noted I believe no group will succeed to beat Google on its own MACRO-CONTENT game field. Only a group that will develop a new MICRO-CONTENT search engine will have a chance to build a meaninful machine.

Here are some excerpts about these new competitors:

http://www.pandia.com/sew/162-europan-search-engine-alliance-to-challenge-google.html
According to the Norwegian policy newletter Mandag Morgen (Monday Morning) Fast and Schibsted are now building an research alliance with Accenture and several universities in Norway, Ireland and the US, including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (which gave birth to Fast), the University of Tromsø, the University of Oslo, the Norwegian School of Management, Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Cornell University in the US.
The partners are to invest some NOK 340 million (US$ 51 million) in the new research center Information Access Disruptions (iAd) over an eight year period, Monday Morning reports.

http://www.pandia.com/sew/107-fast-is-back-on-the-web-search-engine-scene.html
One of the reasons for this Norwegian search engine bonanza is that Google has expressed a special interest in this Internet savvy market. These companies would like to present localized search engines for the Norwegian Internet users before google.no becomes something more than a Norwegian language clone of google.com.

http://www.ketupa.net/schibsted.htm - Schibsted group: Overview
The Norwegian Schibsted group is a newspaper and book publisher with online and film interests, competing with Egmont, Sanoma WSOY, Metro and Bonnier.
Schibsted owns Aftenposten, the largest newspaper in Norway, 49.9% of Sweden's leading paper, Aftonbladet and all of Postimees, Estonia's largest daily.The group includes Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang and papers in Spain and Estonia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schibsted - Schibsted - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Schibsted is one of the leading media groups in Scandinavia.Schibsteds present activities relate to media products and rights in the field of newspapers, television, film, publishing, multimedia and mobile services. Schibsted has ownership in a variety of formats; paper, the Internet, television, cinema, video, DVD and wireless terminals (mobile telephones, PDAs etc.).Schibsteds headquarters are in Oslo. Most of the groups operations are based in Norway and Sweden, but the group has operations in 11 European countries; Spain, France and Switzerland among others.

http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/blog/2005/10/australian-scandianvian-partnership.aspx
- ineedhits SEM Blog: Australian-Scandianvian Partnership Takes on ...
Australian directory business Sensis has announced a joint venture agreement with Norwegian search technology company Fast Search & Transfer and Scandinavian media firm Schibsted to market Internet search and advertising capabilities throughout Europe. Sensis used Fast's search technology on its Australian search site sensis.com.au, which had over 1 million unique users in September...The joint venture will aim to sell its capabilities to directories and media company who want to create a search engine of their own which contains both proprietary local content and relevant web results. Sensis and Schibsted themselves are the joint venture's first customers, with others in the pipeline. However, since the big boys of search, especially Google and Yahoo!, are also heavily investing in local search, the joint venture will most likely face stiff competition. The new joint venture aims to employ 50 staff members by the end of the year, even though Sensis has announced that it will lay off up to 250 staff in Australia as part of a strategic realignment. The joint venture's headquarters will be located in London.