AltaVista In Shallow Dough-Dough

Before anyone asks, yes, that is a shameless ripoff of Wired's Metricom headline of July 11.

Not that I think AltaVista is in danger of immediate bankruptcy (thus "shallow" instead of "deep.") But as a story on News.com reported yesterday ( http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7209141.html ), they continue to undergo major shakeups and changes.

The latest news is that James Barnett is now CEO, and that they've cut their staff by 30 percent. I am a little befuddled by the choice of James Barnett. I don't know that much about him, frankly. But the CNET article said that he was previously president of MyFamily.com, and the press release about his appointment notes, "He is formerly president and CEO of Infogrames North America, a leading worldwide video game software publisher, and chairman, president and CEO of Accolade, an entertainment software maker."

Toward its conclusion the CNET article remarks that "The company is also putting much of its focus into a nonconsumer business that sells search services to companies."

So why appoint as CEO someone who seems to have worked primarily with consumer-oriented businesses? I'm not trying to knock Mr. Barnett -- like I said, I don't know much about him, and what I do know about him (the fact that MyFamily.com has put some great data online, and the quote from the CNET article, "Barnett said he was less concerned with rankings than he was with making the business profitable") I like. I just don't understand.

AltaVista does not, in my opinion, have to completely abandon consumers in order to become a profitable company and a viable competitor to Google or anybody else. They do, however, have to take some steps (time for more crazed ramblings):

1) Immediately begin a campaign of forthright communication with the public. This includes marking paid placements as clearly as possible, and some statement along the lines of, "You know those rumblings we were making about patent lawsuits? Just kidding."

2) Abandon the concept of being a one-size-fits-all search engine. AltaVista is one heck of a search engine. It is one heck of an advanced search engine. It shouldn't be ashamed of that; it should not try to hide its many attributes under a Googlesque simple search interface.

3) Seek out alliances with lesser-known but powerful search and reference sites (Bartleby. Business.com. Surfwax. XRefer. I could be here for days naming them) with the idea of creating a network of loosely-allied, powerful Internet research sites that could refer traffic to each other. Build credibility as an engine to be relied upon for heavy-duty research.

4) Seek out large data collections online and give them a cut rate on the AltaVista engine in return for exclusive deep-search rights (using all of AltaVista's lovely syntaxes) to their material. Pile up the exclusive content.

5) Unashamedly create revenue-generating programs based on AltaVista's search (I've gone into those ideas before so I won't get into them here.) Furthermore, bring in some of the advanced programs offered on other AltaVista properties (I am still wildly jealous of AltaVista UK.)

6) Seek out and support (through promotion or possibly small $$$) up-and-coming research, search, and other technologically-astute sites. Greymatter. Daypop. Smartborg. AmphetaDesk. NewsIsFree. Anybody who's exploring new ways to search, index, manage, distribute, and categorize content. It doesn't seem like it would take too many more resources to maintain a small external R&D department in addition to an internal department.

7) Buy somebody. This may not be feasible anymore, but if AltaVista really and truly wants to go for a nonconsumer market, Atomz.com might be a sweet deal. (I have no idea what Atomz' status is; I'm just thinking out loud.)

Posted to Search Engines-AltaVista