Who reigns supreme?

They all rule the net in their own way. Google’s brand is strongest at the moment and most web searches are conducted there. Yahoo gets more visits overall and dominates most verticals outside search. Microsoft in the form of MSN is ever-present and can never be ignored.

Despite Steve Ballmer’s outbursts, I doubt MS are quite as fearful of Google’s sword-waving as everyone makes out. They are busy becoming a mature business, giving investor’s hard-earned back.

There are still interesting times ahead. What happens when Google’s growth slows? It must slow along with internet growth. That leaves only three options for Google:

• More advertisements
• More relevance and algo-tweaks
• Portalisation

The last point is inevitable because as time moves on the ability for the first two points to keep the growth afloat is reduced. The paradox is that to undertake a true diversification of interests part of Google’s appeal might be reduced. Yahoo can consistently drive traffic from its verticals to new or updated properties. Google, in striving to keep its frontpage simple is hampered in this ability.

But they are putting their chips in line.

Hundreds of verticals with quality features (and slowly growing audiences) are being rolled out by Google. We know none of them are vertical leaders yet but with Google’s strong brand we wonder why? I’d wager the lack of both consistent links between the Google properties and a simple entry point into the key properties from google.com’s frontpage hinder it from sharing the Yahoo Network’s ability to hoist its younger properties into the position of vertical leader.

But Google could make some moves to change this. And they could execute fast. Simple APIs and a focus on scalable infrastructure means they could string their tools and content together in 1000’s of natural ways. Consistency would be almost impossible but if the links are contextual then traffic is likely to flow naturally through its properties.

There are plenty of examples of the cross-polination of Google properties to see - Gmail users seem to be a trial set, gaining access to GTalk and GCalendar with very little effort. But if its so easy for them then why haven’t they done more of this? Why dominate search when they could dominate the world?

Limiting the growth of Gmail and Google Analytics showed off some of the company’s qualities; restraint and focus. The net exploded with the realisation that Google don’t dominate everything. But I think most people missed the point (but then isn’t that always the case? Let’s call that wioota’s Law #1 :)). Google’s traffic is about 80% web search, 20% diversity from this core product. With competitors of the magnitude of Yahoo! and Microsoft, any true deviation from their core business represents more risk than risk aversion.

As the search companies are finding out though, search growth is slowing and soon Google will be forced to force the issue on its new verticals and start serving them up on either the results pages or the frontpage. Either move could achieve one or both of two outcomes:

• Increase the polling of the Google verticals.
• Decrease the usage of Google Search.

And none of this guarantees they could better acquire users or monetise them than Yahoo!

But Google have smart people!

Do you think that the other two multi-billion dollar corporations don’t?

The key to knowing what the game is is in knowing how these companies differ. For those who love to watch Google take on the big boys, think of it like a computer game where Yahoo! is the second end-of-level boss and Microsoft up a level again.

I think plenty of analysis on how Yahoo! builds its verticals into category killers could be done. I’d wager their email is the real key to leveraging the userbase. At just over 2% marketshare Gmail has a long way to go in that area.

All three have proven to be able to move boldy so the future is far from written but what is clear is that the market has a long way to go in understanding how these companies compete. The valuations would be vastly different I suspect.