Safa Sez: Search Worth $14 Billion In 2007, But No One Amazed

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy has been covering the paid search space for ages, offering one
of the earliest independent predictions of future spending. Rashtchy’s Golden Search Turns Platinum
from MediaPost looks at how his March 2003 projection that search would hit $7 billion was greated with amazement, while his recent November 2004 estimate increasing that
figure to $13.5 billion seems to have caused hardly a ripple. Why? "I think search is now accepted as a big business," Rashtchy said. In this article, a closer look at his
latest estimates — though as always, I dispute that "contextual search" is search or that those
figures should be lumped in with search.