Search is the biggest market in the history of humankind
This is how we make it different
How Big Is Search?
It seems an amazing claim, and it’s true: search is the largest market in the history of the world. Let’s look at large numbers for a moment.
Any given day these days Big Search is serving up around 7.5 billion searches per day (see the current count here: https://www.internetlivestats.com/) and that number is likely far from the total number of searches done on a daily basis. It doesn’t count voice search (siri, alexa, etc), nor searches done on other platforms such as Wikipedia or LexisNexis.
There could easily be 15 billion searches on any given day, and that number will only grow over the next decades. Especially true as the internet is getting bigger every day and is also growing a whole new arm on blockchain, and much of that new growth will want to be, will need to be, searchable.
And, perhaps more importantly, people will want to search for all the new stuff that’s out there. (And, BTW, Plumb is going to be the only search engine to show blockchain URLs, later this year)
Clearly, from a transactions-per-day point of view, search is the largest market ever invented. Today it’s already so big, it’s effectively everyone on the planet searching twice per day. There are very few things humans do that rival that volume and most of them are organic actions like breathing or other bodily functions.
Beyond that, if we look at search in terms of financial value, it’s one of the largest markets ever there, too. It’s difficult to actually compile these numbers, but not hard imagine the combined values of Google, Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and the other top search engines. As a single company it would certainly be the largest ever.
Search as a market is enormously valuable. For any but the largest companies in the space, search is effectively a service with infinite demand. That’s true because search is also vital. In the digital world (cyberverse) search is like air or water out here.
How Plumb is Different
As the upstart we at Plumb have the enormous opportunity to change that market, and to deal with its constituents (aka every one of you) in a new way. To build a search engine with a difference, one that changes the way you search and the results you get. There is little doubt anymore that Big Search skews our results to best suit their interests…not ours.
As I have been interviewing people about search there is a trend that keeps on popping up: it’s getting worse. Many people sense that the quality of their results are deteriorating. That Big Search is giving up high-quality results for results that keep us, their customers, on their properties longer. According to Geoffery Folwer of The Washington Post, it’s quite notable.
To quote Mr. Fowler: “Without us even realizing it, the Internet’s most-used website has been getting worse. On too many queries, Google is more interested in making search lucrative than a better product for us.”
That’s how we’re different, one of the two main ways. We’re much more interested in being a great search product. We’d much rather show you the wide variety of stuff out there than keep you on Plumb. That is built into the company, into our DNA. (Our other differentiator is Data Sovereignty, but that’s for another article)
We think, and we’re betting the company on it, that people will come back for great results — for a great search product, for a great search experience.
Results that aren’t openly skewed by our desire to alter your behavior. There is a lot of great stuff out there and our goal is to help you find it. We are operating in the largest market ever and that means that we can provide a great service for a fair price (what a thought).
Plumb is where you’ll discover new stuff, stuff that you won’t see anywhere else. When you’re looking for “cat food,” in-depth results might not matter. But, when you’re looking for something more nuanced, something outside of your normal search patterns, Plumb will show you the parts of the internet that you might have been missing.
And all of us look forward to doing it.
The next time you’re searching two or three times to find what you want, switch tabs and try Plumb. We think you’ll like the results. So much that you’ll keep coming back.
See more. Stay Independent.
Citations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/19/google-search-results-monopoly/