Search Experience – a Fading Glory?
My sense is that the search experience has hit a plateau. Use Yahoo or Google and arguably you will get the same results. Some exceptions of course exist, but generally what you get from one is about what you get from the other – the overall experience has not evolved significantly in recent memory. Sound familiar? How about telephone companies or banks – when was the last time you noticed a difference?
My thesis here is that search as an industry has matured and will face the same problems of innovation that entrenched traditional industries have faced. After all, few of us ever go past page 5 and it is not because we have found exactly what we were looking for.
Much remains to be done in the search space and while the folks at Yahoo and Google might argue that they have the brightest and the finest to further innovation, my sense is that they can not escape the inevitable problem of being too big to really innovate. As far as I am concerned that provides entrepreneurs with opportunities. Think contextual associations, community related content, visual techniques or specialized verticals, to name but a few. Do net get deterred by what on the surface looks like and impregnable fortress. Opportunities abound for the brave hearted.
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AFAIK, Google is posed to introduce a brand new result UI. Seems to me, it’s still looking for the way how to innovate.
Comment by funTomas — 5/3/2006 @ 12:01 pm
What about the semantic web (for instance http://aduna.biz/)?
Comment by Thomas — 5/3/2006 @ 12:19 pm
Exactly. Another good example.
Comment by Mark Tluszcz — 5/3/2006 @ 2:20 pm
the problem with most search engines is that it 5takes too long to search aname or an address and that often the search engine repeats the same operations agin-and-again , leading you to afeeling of being lost in a maze. these features have to be addressed.
Comment by dave — 5/5/2006 @ 9:47 am