What are some Swedish search engines?

What is the lesson of Kayak for Google? Does it mean that, over time, more product-searches will begin at vertical search engines with excellent user experiences that are focused for that vertical?

• Few people begin their search for a flight product on Google, because of the existence of excellent vertical search engines such as Kayak. As search engines for other product verticals, such as laptops, cameras etc get better and better, will Google gradually lose its position as the default place where you begin your product searches? Chris Dixon has recently written about this issue, specifically about the threat that Amazon poses to Google http://cdixon.org/2010/05/22/while-google-fights-on-the-edges-amazon-is-attacking-their-core/

• Answer:

  I'd argue the opposite is more likely to be true once natural language search becomes more prevalent. There are certain travel startups that are working on stuff like this, namely Hopper (http://www.hopper.com/) and Adioso (http://adioso.com/). The reason Kayak, Amazon have such large followings is because it is currently hard for Google to figure out your intention if you search for "The Tipping Point." Do you want the book by Malcom Gladwell, or do you want to read articles about the Tipping Point, or a photo of an object when it's at the point of tipping over, or about the point of tipping at restaurants in cultures etc. By the mere fact that you are at Amazon.com it means you are probably searching for books, so it can give you a better result than just a general Google search. You are doing most of the work to help them cull down the possibilities just by choosing to search on Amazon over Google. Same thing for Kayak, if you typed in "Flights from SF to LA on august 3rd at 10pm arriving by midnight . . " Google probably wouldn't understand. Kayak and all other travel search engines have thrived because their menu is more customized and Google doesn't yet have the capability to understand natural language well enough. But what happens when instead of tuning the sliders on Kayak and using the date picker you can literally just type in your search, or dictate it to your computer, and Google is now intelligent enough to figure it out. What happens when Google knows your interests because you liked "Malcom Gladwell" on your facebook profile so it knows to present the book and not articles about Tipping in Japan . . . that day isn't here yet, but I don't think that vertical search by domain will necessarily have the advantage forever, and I'd argue the trend is going towards google, not away from it, as their engine becomes more intelligent.