Wharton-SMU Research Center

In-House Seminar

Guest Speaker:

Kartik Hosanagar
Assistant Professor of Operations and Information Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Date & Venue:
Date: 18 July 2005, Monday
Time: 4.00pm-5.45pm
Venue: Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Seminar Room NSR2.4
Singapore Management University
50 Stamford Road, Singapore 178899
(Location Map) Please note our new campus address.

Topic:
Competition and Vertical Integration in the Search Engine Market

About the Seminar:
The search engine market has witnessed considerable changes in industry structure in the recent past. These include recent decisions by Yahoo to stop outsourcing its search technology to Google and instead own its own search index and algorithms. Similarly, MSN has also rolled out its own search technology. This paper analyzes the dynamics of competition between two search engines and the incentives for vertical integration. We find that the primary drivers of technology integration by search engines are similarity in service features across search engines and ratio of their cost of quality. Our model suggests that the Google’s decision to offer new features such as Google News and Google Language Tools along with a greater emphasis on search by portals like Yahoo and MSN resulted in vertical integration in the search market.

Registration:
This seminar is free. Please register early. (Admission on a first-come-first-served basis.)
For registration, please click here

Enquiries:
Ms. Lim Lih Yeng
Email: lylim@smu.edu.sg, Tel: 6822-0197
Ms. Priscilla Cheng
Email: priscillacheng@smu.edu.sg, Tel: 6822-0383