Guardi~1 trashes Google

[Daeron]

Google fights for top spot

Google will raise billions when it goes public in a few months, but
Jack Schofield wonders if it will be overtaken by competitors

Thursday October 30, 2003
The Guardian

Has Google left it too late? The web's favourite search engine is
expected to go public in March .. it may not be enough to fight off
Yahoo and Microsoft, which also covet the search business.

[...]

One obvious solution would be for Microsoft to buy Google, but that
won't happen now. Microsoft always makes a straight calculation of how
much it would cost to develop a technology, if there's time, against
how much it would cost to buy it in ..

[...]

Microsoft doesn't have a problem: it is a software company and search
is a software problem ..

Microsoft also has an edge because most people use its browser, and by
default, this delivers a vast number of searches to its MSN search
engine ..

[...]

Against that, Google's search is stuck: its database is not getting
bigger, and its search results are not getting better, they are
getting worse. Things that were simple when Google had just a few geek
users ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1073564,00.html