Coming soon: Google for Latinos?

Will identity based search engines catch on with the part of the general public? A man named Johnny C. Taylor thinks so and he justifies the creation of RushmoreDrive- a search engine tailored for African-Americans:

"Someone said to me, 'We don't have a white Google, why do you need a black Google?'" he said during a visit to the Times today. "And I said, 'Of course you do -- It's called Google.'"

Though the idea of race-based search engine may seem racist and half-baked, ZDNet senior editor Sam Diaz observed that search engines like RushmoreDrive could provide worthy competition for Google:

When it comes to search, going head-to-head with Google - as Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Ask and others have tried - may not be the best approach. Maybe the better way is to nibble away at Google’s share of the pie via one targeted group at a time. This thing with RushmoreDrive.com isn’t about race. It’s about meeting the search needs of a subset of the population. It just so happens that this subset is African-Americans. Could the next nibbler go after women or bicyclists or senior citizens?

Could a search engine aimed at Latinos be useful or unnecessary? One the one hand there has been a steady growth in the online use by Latinos so a specialized search engine may do well in that market. Such a tool could serve as a logical a next step beyond web portals like terra.com.

Conversely, the notion may backfire in that users could be pigeonholed into specific sites based on the search engine’s findings. Furthermore, a specialized search engine may be unable to cater to the needs of the diverse Latino populace.

What do you think?

(Hat tip: Metafilter).

Image- SBI

Sources- Los Angeles Times, Post Chronicle, ZDNet, Metafilter, Latin-Know