Wireless Search Engines: Bigger Isn't Better
by C. J. Kennedy
Nextel Phones' Google wireless search engine gives the customer the ability to download over a billion web sites. But is it what they want?
The grail quest of harnessing the search power of the internet to a mobile phone has begun -- or maybe not. As the wireless revolution picks up speed, techies and VC's all whisper about the potential power and revenue of a moble internet that actually functions. Well, Nextel and Google claimed the search is over: their wireless engine can search the billion plus web sites. Google, the internet search giant that attracts 15 million viewers a day to its search engine and its customers' engines, including Yahoo and Cisco, is a true powerhouse in the field. It would appear that the wireless web's search engine space is filled.
Not so fast. Google uses a program which takes the internet through a WAP gateway, translating the web's mark-up language HTML into the wireless web's language WML (Wireless Mark-up Language). Content is often lost in the process, which strips out graphics and dynamic HTML, and leaves between four and eleven lines of text. Also, in my experience scrolling through search results, especially with the explanation of each site, takes multiple screens. Google has acknowledged these problem by aiming for relevant search results. "From the beginning, we were getting feedback that the interaction is kept simple, and the users find what they are looking for in the first screen or two, says David Krane, spokesperson for Google.
Is Bigger Better? Searching the wireless web using a phone, surfing from CNN.com to Ebay to Jokeoftheday, is similar to playing an early video game like "pong." Cool, unless you know there's something better out there. The fact is tripple-touch-typing is a pain. To search for the Wall Street Journal's mobile edition requires the user to press 38 keys. Imagine if you were looking for the lyrics to a Beatles' song like, "It's A Hard Day's Night." Scrolling through search results can be painful as a cell phone can only translaste 5k of data at a time, and then waiting another quarter minute for the next results. And when you do click through to your web site, often you get half a screen of text, or not even that if the java script is too sophisticated.
Does this mean that wireless search engines are useless? As Google refines its search engine for functionality, start-up companies like Pinpoint are offering more focused wireless web searches for companies like Lycos. Pinpoint runs a topic specific search engine, for example at Golf.com keying in "Drivers" would only result in selections only to do with clubs not cars. "We have the largest comprehensive search engine index that is optimized for the wireless web through a content provider," says Jud Bowman, CEO of Pinpiont. "We are not cramming information for a seventeen inch screen down to a three inch screen."
On October 3rd Pinpoint annouced a Wireless Directory Engine which provides a menu-driven system to locate pages and applications that have been specifically created for the 1.5 million WML sites of the wireless Web. To find the Wall Street Journal's mobile edition via pinpoint, a user selects "2" to access "News", selects "2" again to access "Newspapers", and then selects "2" to go to the Wall Street Journal. Pinpoint's directory taxonomy is categorized by content editors - real people. This personalized analysis of wireless web content shrinks the size of the field which can be searched. Eric Harber, Vice President of Marketing and Business Deveopment for Pinpoint, says that they will have over 500 sites available on the Lycos site. A far reach from Google's 1 billion internet sites, but of course all of pinpoint's web sites actually work.
Does Anyone Have Any Better Ideas? PDA's do not have exaggerated functionality problems. Microsoft's Pocket PC can run the internet directly, shrinking the web down and offering searches by MSN or HotBot, among others. "There are a few things we do to optimize the web page for the Pocket PC," says Ed Suwanjidar, Product Manager for Mobile Devices Division of Microsoft. "[The Pocket PC] page functionality for HTML, support for images and purchases. There isn't much you lose." Google has developed the search engine abiity for the Palm VII using PQA, which still has to strip out the graphics from web sites.
Internationally, SearchEngineWatch.com lists ten WAP-specific search engines out there: inlcuding 2thumbsWAP based in Manila; FastWap, which started in Norway, now with branches in Boston and San Francisco; Mopilot with offices in the UK, France and Malaysia as well as in their main base in Germany; WapWarp which is based in Sweden; WAPLY which is based in Germany. Of course this is not complete, as Google, Lycos and BabelServer from Norway are not listed. The geographical imbalance is also evident in the users of these sites, with large numbers coming from Northern and Western Europe. Michael Ehlebrecht, CEO of WAPLY says that of their 150,000 visitors a month, about 20% are from Germany, and the others are mostly from England, Netherlands and Spain. Tom Pestano, CEO of 2thumbsWAP says that of their average 3000+ visitors a day, about 50% are from Europe, 30% from Asia, and 20% from, "North America and the rest of the World." Yahoo lists 19 wireless search sites, adding Xift.com, WAPinside, Gixon Wap Catalogue, Coodies and WapSearch.com, as well as others. The functionality of these sites varies. From a Palm V device in New York I was able to use BabelServer to predicatably search for wireless optimized sites like CNN's WML site, but like most of these sites, as soon as I moved off that path and to HTML sites, I found myself blocked by the message that these were unable to be downloaded.
In Germany the questions of transcoding and tripple-touch-typing are brushed away by Michael Ehlbrecht of WAPLY, whose search engine only uses WAP sites, "It is a generation thing. There is a line. Students between 12 and 17 have no problem with tripple-touch-typing. My daughter is so fast that they send SMS messages across the classroom instead of writing."
As for the all important revenue stream, Tom Wilde of FastWap Search puts it this way, "mobile phones have a captive audience, and know tons more about people [their users] than ISPs - they know where you are, who you're calling and they are in a unique position to leverage this." Wisely steering cleer of transcoding problem, FastWap's current catalog includes over 750,000 WML decks.
Room To Grow. Yahoo! Inc, the premier search site of the web, announced on Ocotber 10th that it topped annalysts expectations for its third-quarter, including revenues of $296 million and profits of $81 million. Pinpoint began the year by closing a round of venture capital worth $5 million and already they are competing with Google for the wireless search engine space. "We chose to go with Pinpoint," explains Rick Hutton, Business Development Manager at Lycos Wireless, with total revenues of from the past year totaling $291 million, "because they focus on wireless infrastructure and search, rather than being internet focused, and take what they've done and make it conform to the wireless space."
In a year and a half, third generation phones will be produced for the wireless market, bringing high level graphics and larger chunks of information to cellular phones. By then, Google should be able to download the net to a phone with ease. Already they have advanced from their first generation which translated simple text, to support navigation bars. Now in their third-generation they support forms to input data. They are at the Beta stage of their Google Number Search Technology, which will take a lot of pain away from the tripple-touch-typing by asking the customer to key in the letters once and then annalyzing the string of numbers for the correct word, like modern phone directories.
But mobile search engines are still a long way from the functionality of a PC - even a Pocket PC. Ed Suwanjindar of Microsoft says, "The biggest frustration is still the bandwidth. It is such a constraint that the data is not coming down fast enough. Above the limitations of having to take out graphics and deal with the shorter screens, there is still a lot of improvement for the the bandwidth speed."
Until 3G phones are a reality, the question remains, can Pinpoint continue their Cinderella story of the nineteen year old Jud Bowman, their founder and CEO, who sent back his acceptence letter to Stanford University a little more than a year ago and started Pinpoint with a friend, which now has forty employees and two locations. They are anticipating another major partnership this Fall with a portal which has 60 million registered users. Although Yahoo does have a mobile site, they offer a 685 affiliates over a directory instead of a search engine, including a list of 203 regional wireless sites. This is similar to the number Pinpoint offers over their edited wireless search, which customers may chose for its ease of use. There is room for Pinpoint to capture this market.
