GOOG's strength now is no longer in its technology, but its mark

what I found a couple of days ago was that, GOOG, despite all its aura and images, remains on the 1.0 version of its search technology which is based on just web-page indexing and word matching. The results can not only be bad, it\'s insultingly lousy as I have experienced. (see http://web.wenxuecity.com/BBSView.php?SubID=finance&MsgID=1115772)

while Yahoo has apparently moved on to possibly object indexing

the end result is that Yahoo\'s search is much more rel event. Relevance has always been the holy grail of search, and it\'s a surprise that Yahoo, not GOOG, has seemed to crack it.

It brings a lot of questions to GOOG\'s management\'s vision, focus, and execution.

This is not to say that GOOG will just go down. 1, not many users are aware of this yet. Yahoo has a lot of its own execution problem, for example, bundle its toolbar with IM which is not necessary since in a lot of places, IMs are banned, or a user may want to stay with MSN IM etc.

2, even when a critical mass of users found out the lousy result, the business users are still very much in love with GOOG and it will take much more efforts for them to warm up to anyone who is not a clear No.1.

still, as we have witnessed the reversal of fortune in AAPL vs. MSFT, better products will likely eventually win the hearts of users, and then stock market,