It is obvious that lately, the search engines are trying to enhance their results to better anticipate the user’s intentions. Google has the advertisers with its Adwords service, and the technology to determine which results to show within the email interface.
Yahoo is re-vamping Overture and Inktomi; Microsoft is already jumping into the search area. It looks like these search engines powerhouses will enhance the search engine experience and take search engine technology to the next level.
The future of search engine is based on the fact that users want information to be accessible; they want it relevant and fast. Search engines will be personal assistants, butlers, guides and gurus, able to provide potential answers to most difficult questions. Search engines of the future will permeate much more aspects of our lives, becoming more localized, persuasive and personalized.
The “Google inside” mobile is not anymore a future project, such mobile could have voice controlled search functionally that search for results that are pertinent to the current location on a GPS map. Mobile communications device manufacturers bundle voice controlled Web searching features into their phones and PDAs.
We can imagine also our kitchen appliances: search for recipe, for airplane seats – search for places to go when someone arrives at the travel destination, or do a local search to find a repair service.
The trend is the personalization, the use of all data that the search engines are capturing about their users. Craig Silverstein of Google has a vision that in 300 years, search engines will be more like yeast based search pets that understand human inferences, feelings and emotions.
Gerry Campbell, general manager of AOL Search and Navigation gave another example: the AOL’s current search learns from their users’ habits and location and uses that information to provide more relevant search results.
At this point, an important question to consider is how much information a search engine should be allowed to collect about user before the user’s privacy is violated. My feeling on this issue is that I want the search engines to surprise me with spectacular results. If the search engines of the future will know more about a user, they will present more focused search results, as good as the user’s query.
