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See the relationships between search engines with this handy chart

See the relationships between search engines with this handy chart.

Reader comments

danJan 27, 2004 at 5:05PM

did you notice that MSN does nothing for anyone? - its purely a 'user'

jkottkeJan 27, 2004 at 5:12PM

MSN is anti-social software.

parsimonyJan 27, 2004 at 5:29PM

"did you notice that MSN does nothing for anyone? - its purely a 'user'"

so are ask jeeves, lycos, alltheweb, alta vista, et al. not to be snarky, but so what? it's a portal.

majickJan 27, 2004 at 7:27PM

So, basically, this chart shows that Google has a bunch of resellers and rebranders to put portal crap and blinking banner ads around their results, and that it provides most of the actual "value" to searching on the web. It's neat to see it laid out like that, but it really isn't telling us anything new. There are craptacular portalized sites, and they either wrap Google or exist on the fringe of the net.

jhyJan 28, 2004 at 2:16AM

parsimony: alta vista and ask jeeves both provide their own primary search results, so they're not entirely 'users' like MSN and the rest. Of course, they are still craptacular portalized sites.

Chris BeckerJan 28, 2004 at 9:00AM

So Inktomi is a Yahoo! company but does not provide/receive any results to/from Yahoo! search engine? Odd.

CoreyJan 28, 2004 at 9:56AM

The chart is really cool, but incomplete. I worked on Hotbot, so I can tell you for a fact that it uses FAST and Teoma results. It could also benefit from showing paid placement listings like Overture and separating Google AdWords from standard Google results. It becomes even more incestuous when you see how the paid search listings are appearing on the various sites.

Søren DalsgaardJan 28, 2004 at 11:41AM

Ehhh, the chart is supplied by "Bruce Clay" who also makes the search engine that by coincidence (...) appears in the very middle of the chart, and seems to supply all the others...
- Doesn't look completely unbiased to me.

donald tettoJan 28, 2004 at 11:49PM

I'm not sure I get the last comment. dmoz? It only supplies directory listings, and it really does do that. It looks to me like "Bruce Clay" sells a search-engine bolstering service.

Bruce ClayJan 30, 2004 at 2:13AM

Actually, dmoz is owned by Netscape but has a charter that forbids charging a fee to use the directory content -- strictly free. AOL owns Netscape. Time-Warner owns AOL. Unfortunately, I do not own any of them. I do "search engine optimization".

This thread is closed to new comments. Thanks to everyone who responded.