Almost a year ago, I wrote about semantics and social networking as threats to Google. In that post, I referenced a prior article on investments in natural language processing, such as Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset, which is now part of Bing.
Today, there are two articles I recommend. The first addresses the extent to which Google’s Superbowl ad is a response to the threat from Bing. The second addresses Facebook overtaking Google.
Honestly, I doubt Bing will over take Google in the near future. For the long term, I doubt Bing can out google google without violating IP. One of the major factors to Google’s success is their ability to scale out and manage a vast network of servers efficiently. Until someone else can beat google’s deployment and management skills, their chance at beating google search is rather unlikely.
Although facebook has been growing rapidly, my feeling is it has reached the peak. Facebook has been suffering from non trivial performance issues lately, so chances are they are going to struggle for quite a while. Handling the increase in traffic will become a much bigger factor. From my understanding of facebook’s architecture, they have significant issues to over come and most of them are non trivial. having worked at verizon superpages in the past, handling massive traffic is very challenging. Facebook has adapted to the traffic increase over the last several years, but at some point putting band aids on a problem will fall apart. Without the appropriate architecture, staff and resources, adding more traffic could bring the entire system to a grinding halt.
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