March 15, 2004

An advanced search engine being developed in Lebanon has the ambitious goal of overtaking the likes of Google.

Coneteq, which is to be launched at the end of this year, is going to be “an enormous success,” said a very confident Tom Holzel, founder of Velocity Associates, a US-based consulting company that has been employed to promote the search engine.

What exactly does Coneteq have that the world’s undisputed search engine leader does not? The problem with Google is that it gives “very fast and nearly useless results,” said Holzel, who conducted a very simple test to prove this point. It involved a search for ‘sleeping bag’ using Google. The outcome: 1,250,000 results in 0.18 seconds. “They brag it took 0.18 seconds to find. But, it would take a lifetime to look at 1.25 million sites, so 0.18 seconds means nothing,” said Holzel. “Fast search is not fast find.”

Coneteq, however, has the capacity to provide fewer results, all of which meet the exact specifications that users ask for. “It does this by way of a multi-parameter search engine,” said Wissam Rachid, a young developer working on Coneteq. “This means that you can search for a number of parameters at the same time. For instance, you can specify a product, brand, price and location,” Rachid said. He explained that Google gives countless results because it is a one-parameter search engine.

"The current internet search system falls short,” Holzel said. As a result, there is a tremendous struggle going on between major players like AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft ­ all of whom are vying to take over Google. “They recognize that the search engine business is going to be huge, and they are all trying to get in on it,” Holzel said. “Microsoft is literally spending billions of dollars for a search engine and new operating system called Longhorn, which they expect to release by 2006,” he said.

“The question is, ‘What can newcomers offer to position themselves differently from Google?’” asked Holzel, who said the positioning of Google right now was tremendous. “By positioning I don’t mean their market share but where they are in the mind of the user. They are number one. If you want to look something up on the internet the first thing you do is Google. It has become a verb ­ that is terrific positioning,” he said.

In just five years Google has become a force to be reckoned with. “It is now a 1,300-strong operation with revenues last year of $900 million. These are not public figures but figures leaked out of the company,” Holzel said. “Their pre-tax profit last year was $350 million. That’s not bad for a couple of guys,” he said, reiterating the often-cited fact that one of the founders, Sergey Brin, is a Russian émigré while the other, Larry Page, is a hippie.

Holzel believes that the Lebanese start-up stands a good chance of overtaking major search engines such as Google. He emphasized that its multi-parameter search engine was just one of its plus points. “It’s the easiest one to describe, but there are quite a few other advantages,” he said. However, Coneteq’s first challenge will be to convince traders, like automobile retailers, “to buy into the idea and take the time to fill out the matrix ­ which is what consumers are going to fill out when they want to buy,” Holzel told The Daily Star after the presentation he gave on Thursday at the American University of Beirut.

Holzel, an expert in Strategic Positioning, was brought in as a consultant to “position” Coneteq. He described positioning as the art of describing products so the prospect feels compelled to buy. “If you make a very clear, coherent, understandable pitch, right away traders will see what you are doing and will be interested,” he said, adding that start-ups should place a great deal of attention on positioning. He believes traders will be receptive once they hear about Coneteq’s competitive advantages. “Because it will generate good business for them ­ and you can’t stand in the way of good business,” he said.

During the presentation, Holzel was asked how long it would take other search engines like Google to follow suit. “If it weren’t for the patents they could probably do it in six to nine months,” he replied. Riad al-Khouri, Coneteq partner in charge of communication strategy, told the Daily Star that “this project, the brainchild of a Lebanese inventor working with a local and international team, is based on a number of US patents granted over the last two years.”

Coneteq has been developed in Lebanon in collaboration with a small team in the US. “We are now at an advanced stage of our work and hope to be able to tell you more about Coneteq’s progress over the coming months,” said Khouri. He added that the developers were confident that Coneteq “would have a big impact in the world of internet shopping.”

Source: Daily Star.com

        

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