After raking in billions of dollars helping the masses search the Web, Google Inc. is targeting academics like Daniel Branton.
The Harvard University biology professor has used Google for years to locate sensors and other laboratory equipment. But it wasn't very good at finding peer-reviewed research papers and other academic publications.
That changed with the recent release of Google Scholar. The specialized search engine uncovers papers better than Google.com, Branton said, and is simpler to use than the expensive databases in Harvard's vaunted libraries.
"I found that I could find, in a much more rapid fashion, what I was looking for by just putting in a few keywords," he said. "Even if it had a bit of advertising, I wouldn't mind."
That's exactly what Google was hoping the professor would say. Google Scholar doesn't feature ads, but one day it just might.
Along with rivals Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., Google is in hot pursuit of the egghead crowd as a new source of traffic -- and revenue. They all see opportunity in scholarly information, a $12-billion business long dominated by publishers such as Reed Elsevier and Thomson Corp.
The Web companies are aiming to snag scholars before they head to subscription services to do research. To do that, the companies have to equip their search engines to scour some of the billions of pages locked away in subscription sites, hidden corners of the Web and books.
"The search engine market is very competitive," said Ed Pentz, executive director of CrossRef, a nonprofit organization in Lynnfield, Mass., that works to make scholarly papers available to the public. "This is the next stage, and it's prestigious, high-quality content. It expands the range of what they can offer users."
It also gives search engine companies more pages on which to place ads. Google generates nearly $3 billion a year serving up targeted ads tied to keywords, and the Mountain View, Calif., company says it could sell even more if it could just find relevant pages to put them on.
If it does, advertisers will probably pay extra to deliver their highly targeted messages directly to potential customers such as Branton, said Chuck Richard, a vice president with market research firm Outsell Inc.
When the Harvard professor uses Google Scholar to find papers on his specialty, nanotube biology, companies that sell the $6,000 humidity sensors he favors might be willing to pay a pretty penny to have their ads appear on his computer screen.
