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A few months ago I stopped going to my local comics shop. I had thought I would deal with the guilt of that decision for some time to come, but, it turns out I made pretty good call. They folded up shop not 2 weeks later. Why guilt? Well, if you're not familiar with the "plight" of the comics industry, and I know you're not, then the idea I would willingly abdicate my "responsibility" to keep local shops alive is virtually blasphemous to some die hards. The issue was pretty simple, though. They just weren't very good at the whole "comics" thing.

I've discussed the idea of subscriptions boxes in a previous blog. It's a great idea, and one that's pretty much an industry standard. It's even better if your shop can get the right books to the right people on a regular basis. There were very few weeks I would find everything in order in my box. Also, the strictures of gainful employment meant I would arrive in the early evening, virtually assuring I would miss out on some titles that were left out of the box, and others that I hadn't the forethought to preorder. They would "backorder" the missed titles for me, but these purported backorders never arrived. This is what I accepted for about two years.

Why?

It was too much trouble to change. They were the closet store geographically to me. The next nearest option is much farther away and located in a place you simply don't want to reach during rush hour traffic. The "local comics shop" is something of a dying breed, so it's not like there is another option just up the street, as one might have with supermarkets. Which leads to the guilt barrier. I was doing my part to keep this venerable American institution, the local comic shop, alive. Unfortunately, this is just a malfunctioning organ of that greater body, and my life support wasn't enough to keep it going.

So they closed, and there was no longer a barrier to change for any of their customers. As I said, I finally got fed up and stopped returning 2 weeks before. In passing, a co-worker mentioned they had closed, and I just wasn't all that shocked. Now I'm back to doing the online subscription thing via a comics shop located thousands of miles away from me. They get my order right every time, I just have to pay for shipping. I guess I'm still supporting a "local" comics shop, just one in New York.

So, the moral of my little story is that barriers to change can cause people to accept bad service, even gladly, perhaps, if they feel it's too hard to get out.

Barriers in Search

The search engine "marketplace" is a competitive one. All the revenue generated from those PPC ads littered to the top and left of the natural results might be a distraction, but they're one reason you see quality in the natural results. The engines continue placing a premium on the quality of natural results because they know it's one of the primary reasons users employ their services and, more importantly, continue to use their services. The more they use it, the more ads they'll see. That's math even a philosophy major can do, which is useful, because I was one.

Search engines are also in a battle due to the perception there are few barriers to change. After all, if you can type in "g's", "o's", "l's", and an "e", you can probably also type in "y's", "a's", "h's", "o's", abutting both with the proverbial ".com." If you're really lazy, you can type in ask.com. It's just that simple to do your search somewhere else, and be looking at someone else's ads in the process. The effort to keep your search business, and your eyeballs on the ads, drives the engines to keep their natural results as relevant as possible.

Each major engine is doing its part to erect some barriers, though.

Back when Google was basically just a white block with a box, logo, and "Search" button, Yahoo was undergoing its transition from web directory to "portal." It was quite the der rigeur move in the late 90's, with Lycos, Excite, and MSN (which was trying to be AOL at the time), all morphing from search boxes to big pages with news, sports, weather, and various other mostly useless fluff that made the actual search bar a little harder to pick out. Yahoo was also going about creating and acquiring other services, such as Yahoo Groups, that would eventually become part of their grand-unified login.

What started as portals evolved into customizable portals, and this was pretty much the root of the whole search engine "user account" system. If you wanted a custom portal, you needed a login so your customization could be remembered. So you signed up, with Yahoo or MSN, or eventually Google, who finally relented and created a home page portal with iGoogle. Perhaps to their credit, they didn't make it the default page.

After the portals laid the groundwork for search engine user accounts, then proliferated the services. Yahoo incorporated instant messaging, job search, free hosting via GeoCities, games, and much more. They would all eventually be integrated under a single master Yahoo login. Google's ravenous appetite for Internet properties is no secret now. Here's a selection of what I see when I click on my user account in Google:

• Alerts
• Analytics
• Blogger
• Docs
• Groups
• iGoogle
• Notebook
• Reader
• Subscribed Links
• Web History
• Webmaster Tools

As a note, I'm writing this in Docs right now. That list is just what I have, not an exhaustive one of all their services. Notable absences include AdWords and GMail, neither of which I use with my work account. They are available though, part of the whole smorgasbord of Google goodies you can add to your one Google login.

The Walls are Subtle

I know what you're thinking. Just because each side has a whole bunch of services that require you to "sign-up" and maintain an account with them, doesn't A, mean they're mutually exclusive, or B, mean you can't use the search function of any other website but their own. Both these facts are true. I could maintain a fully tricked out Google and Yahoo account, with all the trimmings, free or otherwise, accessed on the same machine, with the same browser, and they would not interfere with each other.

That being said, each company is providing wider level of services that keep you "within the family" while you go about your tasks. I'm sure Google "power users" are far more prone to using Google for search, to the exclusion of other options. Same with Yahoo power users. They want you become so comfortable with their services that considering alternatives becomes "too hard". It then becomes a barrier where no barrier really exists.

I'm not sure whether I could be called a "power user", but I do use a great deal of Google's other products beyond search. With search, I'll admit, I simply default to Google. It's the first thing I use and really doesn't "fail" me all that often. Even in cases where it does, I'm not quick to bother with alternatives, preferring to keep throwing myself at Google with different keyword combos, hoping to find just the right one that will give me the answer I need. Rational? Perhaps not, but it's what I do. I suppose when you're hitting thesaurus.com to formulate a search query (other than for keyword research) then it's really not rational.

Take my advice, there's no real barriers out there. Keep your searching mind open, and if you can't find something at your first choice, there's always a second, or a third. Then again, if you take that advice, you're taking the advice of a guy who just said he doesn't take his own advice. Is that rational? Take my advice: it is.