Divining The Uniqueness Of Google

One blogger delved into the offerings from the world's top search engine, placed them into matrices against Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, and sought to find if Google was truly unique. Bill Gates blog entry takes up the Gates gauntlet, and matches Google against the three other big players in the online portal space. For uniqueness of search products, Google's catalog and Usenet search are the only ones not duplicated by AOL, Microsoft, or Yahoo. Of those two, the catalog offering doesn't seem to be very up to date, and the Usenet search comes from Google's acquisition of DejaNews. In services, Google Answers stands out from the other three portals. Services like desktop or mobile search can be found on any of the four. Google doesn't have an entry in non-search services like auctions or a calendar application, though Google Base could be a quasi-entry into the auction/classified field when it launches. The calendar application could be a relatively easy one to implement, and we here