I was somewhat astounded to watch an interview with the founder of a New Zealand search engine called Searchii, which they believe will compete directly with Google and Microsoft Live.

Bro, I respect your entrepreneurial passion, however, if you are going to invest time, energy and money in a start up business, please, please, please make sure it has a sound chance of success. Whilst I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, here are the challenges you face:

Google has 90% market share
You are trying to compete with what is essentially a monopoly. Google have come into this market and obliterated Yahoo! and Microsoft Live (formerly MSN). These companies have far greater resources than you guys.

Search Engines Are About Scale
As a standalone market, not one of the major players would invest in building a New Zealand only search engine. The reason that Google makes money in NZ, aside from their massive market share, is the fact that they don’t need any infrastructure or operations in this country. They can leverage everything from their US, Sydney, Ireland and other international operating units. Effectively in NZ they have sales. The other aspect of scale is that you must have a critical mass of traffic for me to even consider this as an advertising option for our clients. We don’t even bother with Yahoo! Search Marketing because the numbers are too small to warrant the cost of setting up and running a campaign. Do you think you can easily beat Yahoo!’s market share in a short space of time? If I want to spend $500 per day on an average cost per click of $1.50, for example, can you deliver this much targeted traffic?

Google already has a solution
I’m not saying that niche search has no value, in fact I believe it does, however, so does Google. This is why they have launched Google Custom Search Engine which allows you to apply your own filters to the Google index, for example, to create a NZ only search engine. You can then just plug in to their AdSense advertising revenue model, removing the need for you to worry about building your own ad serving, reporting and sales operation. You can rebrand it and still build your own audience, but without the underlying technology issues.

New Zealand Owned Doesn’t Mean Success
You said in your interview that you believe New Zealander’s will support and get behind your site because it is a New Zealand business. I’m sorry, but that is just not going to happen. All the numbers and research show that New Zealander’s are far from loyal to local brands and companies.

You Think Your Point of Difference is Relevancy?
Are you serious? For this to be a factor, Google would have to be not good at relevancy. They are.

New Zealand Only Search Engines Are Not New
SearchNZ existed before Google. Who? I hear you ask. Exactly. This was at one point the most popular search engine in New Zealand. We’re talking way back in the ’90’s.

You obviously have a capable team, as launching something like this is not an inconsiderable project. However, you need to rethink your plans. If the guys behind Wikipedia are struggling to make their search engine a success, with all the leverage they had, you need to consider what a massive challenge you have taken on.

Am I just being cynical? What do you think of Searchii’s chances?