Yup, that’s right. Since Yahoo has now gone out of the business of search thus turning over that responsibility to Microsoft/Bing. This leaves the market within North America with Google.com, Bing.com and a distant third and fourth respectively Ask.com and AOL.com.

Why is this great news? Well first you should consider reading a related article on the topic before proceeding further. Yahoo! switches to Bing search results from pandia.com.

It is important from a business perspective for new entrants in the search engine market, as it leaves in reality only two chickens to pluck, the biggest being Google. Thus there is a strong possibility for a fast market entry as the third real contender to the conglomerate old guys on the block. Nothing short of a revolutionary Graphical User Interface (GUI) will do the trick, along with an excellent product and service. So thanks Yahoo for moving out of the way.

Now, what I find very interesting was the level of investment in the following search engine called Hakia.com. US$21 million total since its initial US$2 million & US$3 million from series B in 2007, market standard of course. But Hakia.com CrunchBase profile shows that in January 2010 they have obtained less than 100,000 unique visitors to their search engine.

Based on industry standard, any new entrant to the search engine market in any serious form will require over US$20 million in Venture Capital funding if such a search engine really intends to compete for the estimated US$21 billion (2007) web advertising market in the USA and estimated US$45 billion (2007) per year for the global web search advertising pie.

However, not all start ups are as lucky as Hakia or a Cuil or a Powerset, the latter now acquired by Microsoft for US$100 million after securing substantial capital investment. None the less this should not serve as a deterrent for innovation and entrepreneurs to enter the market on a boot strap budget and compete head on with multi-billion dollar titans.

If an entrepreneur believes he or she has what it takes, then personal sacrifice must be made in funding one’s project if outside funding is non-existent or one resides in a culture with low degree of intellect in respect to such a market. Entrepreneurs take all the risk, and as such it should be of no surprise they like to enjoy all the rewards.

I am speaking about no other than the launch of Tawfiki.com search engine for the North American, EU & Japanese market. Tawfiki.com is a clone of jahboo.com which will serve Jamaica & the rest of the English speaking Caribbean market.

Now considering that a search engine without heavy US Venture Capital investment, but rather seed financing on a boot strap budget, could be considered a fortune in some parts of the world. The meaning is not to be taken literally as when the actual cost is tallied, it is over US$100,000 in sunk cost and the time invested over the last 4 years.

Now the above search engines mentioned that obtained substantial funding may have actually worked on new algorithms in respect to search results. And not exactly simply providing search results. But at the end of the day if your algorithms produce no better search result, nor does it provide a better user search experience. At the end of the day it is the user’s search experience that will decide success or failure.

Tawfiki.com is actually a search engine and social network. So not only is it competing in the search engine market space, but it is also competing simultaneously with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, seamlessly without noise or clutter.

For those who are not familiar with the meaning of the name Tawfiki and where it originated. It is a name which may be given for a new born African baby boy which means “Divine Guidance” in Swahili.

Rodger McKenzie is a Web2.0 analyst. You can email him at jamexec@gmail.com

Photo: Hakia.com