Lycos and the Importance of Linguistics in Search

Remember Lycos, the search offspring dot-com bubble poster child CMG Information Services, Inc? Well, Lycos is still around, quiet, but still around after changing hands a few times. Now Christopher Mohn, heir to the Bertelsmann media empire and chief executive of Lycos Europe, says his company will be the Airbus of the Internet. That specific allusion means that Lycos Europe will compete with the big American Internet companies the way Airbus competes with Boeing, and not that…well, I hope that’s what he meant. Unclear comparisons are unbecoming of search executives – we need the straight story, not wishful thinking.

Although ICMediaDirect.com is a small-to-medium sized company and not a household name, we are on the Internet, multi-lingual and doing business all over the globe. And this means we’re exposed to our share of European companies especially in the UK and Sweden. Until I read Mr. Mohn’s comments, I never gave it much thought to how or why there isn’t a European presence among the huge names in search. Sure there are some big software companies, but no Yahoo or Google, or Baidu even. I believe, but can’t state with absolute certainty, that a multilingual Europe is at least part of the reason that a Euro search engine hasn’t risen to international prominence. The search industry is in many respects a numbers grab. The goal of the search engine is to create value by indexing more and doing so better.

And it’s because of the search engine’s prolific nature, one where index snowballs, that a search giant hasn’t emerged from the EU. The Euro block is linguistically fragmented with sections of the Internet in French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, et al. The lack of unification keeps a search engine from materializing.

To get a visual, just type in this url: http://www.wikipedia.org and see how the interactive world is divided into languages. Europe holds plenty of pieces to this linguistic jigsaw puzzle. These divisions explain why the EU has no representative search engine to show for itself. In North America, we’re largely an English speaking block. Even Australia has had more success in generating unified search engines. When language isn’t a barrier communication breakthroughs flourish.

Without addressing specifically why Europe lacks a definitive search engine Mohn acknowledged the absence thereof by saying, “So far, we have not built up a sizeable Internet company in Europe. It’s not good for the European Union. Nano-technology, biotechnology and the Internet are the growth industries, but in most of these the position is not good for Europe.”

Here the Lycos chief just oversteps his jurisdiction of authority. He is in no more of a position than I am to say that European biotechnology suffers because of a lack of major European search engine. Search, for all its utility, does not replace smarts or science, and never will. Search functions as an integral cyber service, Mr. Mohn should know this. European biotech, and nano-tech, too, will sink or swim regardless of what search engines are used. Indeed, their technology is more concentrated and advanced than search anyway. The unnamed Internet-media conglomerates, Mohn hints at, principally sort and deliver content available on the web to end-users.

That the American pool is uniform, is good for the American companies; that the growth of the American companies is organic and not state sponsored is better. Mohn bolsters the French and German governmentally supported plans to build a European search engine called Quaero by saying it will succeed through coordination. Really?

Ventures don’t come more capitalistic than the ones we see on the Internet. Bureaucratic search will not work. The fact that it would be jointly run only firms my conviction. It’s not like France and Germany have a history of playing nice together. And, without the pressure to succeed in the open marketplace like private corporations, they haven’t got a chance. Instead of answering to shareholders this Quaero will answer to the electorate of not one country, but two.

Lycos Europe has plans to enter the US market. I can’t envision how an unprofitable European company will make a dent in the North American search market. Many industry wags look askew at Microsoft for introducing AdCenter. Microsoft, with its billions and its presence, is an underdog of sorts in taking on Google and Yahoo. Will Microsoft make it? Its executive plan is to pay to find out. Meanwhile Lycos, most recently in self-congratulatory throes for losing less money per quarter than in recent years, has designs on US search. Is this really a smart decision?

This isn’t to say that I don’t welcome Lycos or that those interested in search shouldn’t. In fact, I’d love to see more companies enter and win in the search game, but Lycos Europe, like their cousins Quaero, seem to be ignoring some pretty basic forces of search. Namely that in this nascent search engine business gross numbers are needed from the outset and the players in the field either have built them organically or are willing to pay billions to compete. Best of luck to Mr. Mohn and Lycos Europe.