[willz]

The author must had some success as he completely ignores how many google-wanna-bes are out there two or three years ago, and then the YouTube-wanna-bes, the Digg-wanna-bes ... There are always tons of dead-bodies in the wanna-bes.

I think the key is to avoid the "hot" wanna-be market. Google got into search when it's not hot. So is YouTube, java, digg ...

[abstractwater]

When google came out, search was already hot. Google made it hotter.

[cstejerean]

hot to the end user, the major players didnt seem to care much about it.

[webwright]

Search was NOT hot when Google came out. Lots of SMART people were convinced that you couldn't build a huge business on search and that the real money was in personalized home pages (portals).