Also, NZTA has invested in new traffic management system that will allow them to feed out lot more API feeds in the next future. So 2009 is going to be a very exciting time because there is a huge opportunity for people to create new apps using NZTA data and mashing it up with the likes of Google maps.

http://diversity.net.nz/a-search-engine-now-thats-novel/2008/10/23/

They don’t need just a small percentage of New Zealand’s search market share, they need to be substantially more than Yahoo! and Microsoft Live to even justify it as an advertising option.

Having been involved in many, many New Zealand web start ups, building a substantial audience is hard, and takes a long time. This is one of the smallest Internet populations in the world and they have chosen a revenue model that depends entirely on scale.

The other issue that hasn’t been addressed is how they are clearly different and better than the market leader? I’m not saying that you shouldn’t take on Google directly, and there are many companies doing this successfully, such as Zoho. However, if you are going to take them on, you need to be clear what your difference is, and I can’t see it? Copying Google’s business model exactly but then applying it to one of the smallest markets in the world, just doesn’t make sense to me.

TradeMe worked because they had a better product than eBay, and still do. They also had the advantage of minimal competition for many years to enable them to build their critical mass. By the time the dust from the dot com crash settled and eBay was considering New Zealand again, it was too late. Whereas, Searchii are launching at a time, when Google has unprecedented market share and now a strong local presence in New Zealand.

There are so many other ways they could have done this. They are not even vaguely attractive to Google as an acquisition opportunity. Would Google pay them a high multiple for their search algorithm or crawler technology? The valuation would be purely based on traffic, in which case they would have been better to build an audience and just sign up to AdSense. Then, they would be an attractive advertising option for our clients.

I hope they do succeed, nothing makes me more upset than seeing capital and resources wasted in the failure of New Zealand founded technology ventures, as it makes it even harder for the next guy. This post is just my opinion of the challenges they face, that don’t seem to have been considered based on the interview with the founder I saw. Maybe they have answers to all of these.

Why not shoot for the stars? Why NOT have audacious goals and try to beat the best.

You don’t start out by saying you want to be half as good as a shitty search engine.

This guy only needs a small percentage of online advertising to be a successful business. Especially in NZ.

Good luck to him.

From their tech page: “To search the billions of pages on the web, Searchii also uses meta search technology to grab the most relevant results from other leading search engines.”

So they’re rehashing Google’s results and selling placement around it?

Fail search.

Nivin, out.