IceRocket vs. Google
Apparently, I’m not aware of the best kept secret on the Web. The secret being, how similar IceRocket is to Google. I’m going out on a limb to assume that Mark Cuban has made this decision conciously. Take a look:
Personally, I like this design. Why? Because it looks so similar to Google. That’s right; I love the fact Cuban had the balls to do this. By putting myself at risk of trying to sound “old school”, I’ve used Google since it first came out in the late 90’s. Wanna know who turned me on to it? My high school librarian. Yep, that’s right. Cardigan sweater, big glasses, and all.
This will only help further the IceRocket vision. Everyone recoginzes Google’s features and unique attributes, right down to the Adwords that appear on the right hand side of every search. IceRocket’s design and business model plays right into all of those key things. I suppose in the end, they will either moderately compete, find themselves having to do something a lot different, or kill in the market. They have about a 1 in 100 Googleplex’s of chance for the latter.
Of course, while comparing IceRocket to Google, who can leave out the way Microsoft has just released VirtualEarth, which is an attempt at competing with Google Earth. Regardless of which product is better, when was the meeting to determine there’s a business in looking up buildings and other people’s houses? For myself, it gets really boring after about 15-20 minutes.
According to Scoble it’s already causing quite a stir. However, he mentions in a later post, MSFT is already playing catch-up in the buzz department. Cheese, anyone?
February 6th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
hehe - good post.
I’ve used Icerocket; not bad, but not great. Technorati still tops ‘em all in my books…
Ah Ms. McRory…back in the day..lol