Michael Yang is on a mission. He wants to make it easy for shoppers to find information about products. And he wants shoppers to use his Web site to do it.
Yang, a Los Altos Hills resident, is founder, president and CEO of Become.com, a search engine for shopping that helps people find product information and prices. What’s driving him is his belief that general search engines don’t go far enough to provide useful information that shoppers need in an easy-to-use, organized format.
“General search engines are good for looking up information about topics,” said Yang. “Their strategy (Google) is to be all things to all people. Become.com is a targeted search engine that delivers information for shopping.”
There’s no question that Mountain View-based Google leads the pack over all other search services. According to Nielsen Net-Ratings, an estimated 2.8 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search in July. This represents nearly 50 percent of all search queries in that period.
But when Yang looks beyond the impressive heft of Google’s usage statistics, he sees an untapped market where people need information by specific categories like music, medicine and shopping.
“Our mission is very focused on people who shop,” he said. Google is popular, Yang concedes. But, it leaves a lot to be desired for consumers that need information to make a buying decision, he claims.
Search engines are going through an evolution not unlike the day when the television industry evolved from three networks to niche cable services, sports and movie channels, he said.
According to a Feb. 20 article in BusinessWeek, targeted search engines are the next wave of search methods that will go beyond the current techniques offered by Google, Yahoo and other search firms. Venture capitalists invested $263 million in 47 search startups in 2005, according to DowJones VentureOne, a research firm.
Become has secured $11.7 million in venture capital, Yang said.
Conduct a search for digital cameras at Become, Google and Froogle – the Google shopping search engine – and similar results appear, but with important distinctions.
On Become.com, the search results provide links to CNET reviews, digital photography reviews and product Web sites. Become neatly arranges price comparisons next to the links to product reviews.
Buttons are available if a user only wants specifications, product reviews or buying guides. And Become localizes information by providing locations of stores in the area.
Conduct a similar search on Google, and you get search results with subtle differences. Like Become, Google provides a list of links to product reviews. And, it provides links to merchants who sell the cameras. But you might also get a link to a site that specializes in how to use a digital camera a topic that might not be immediately relevant for a shopper.
Instead of listing the price comparisons on the page, Google provides links to comparison-shopping sites such as NextTag.com and PriceGrabber.com.
By contrast, Become.com scans the Web, aggregates price comparisons and neatly summarizes them on the same page next to merchants who sell them.
Search for digital cameras at Froogle, which is a beta version search engine, and results are displayed by price and merchant. Froogle also offers a way to find stores that sell cameras by providing a box for your zip code. But, there are no product reviews from third-party experts. Customers provide the ratings on products.
By tightly integrating product information and price comparisons, Become may well be compelling enough for shoppers to return to it with regularity. Yang is confident that his strategy is working.
“Our technology is very innovative and it’s not easy to copy it,” said Yang. “Our core technology is the single biggest barrier to entry.”
Become has 43 employees in its Mountain View headquarters and 20 employees in Japan.
Become.com is located at 1300 Crittenden Lane, Ste. 403, Mountain View. For more information, visit www.become.com or call 694-7900.
