What's Next In Search Technology?
from the lots-of-stuff dept
We're nowhere near where search technology can be, and with everyone so focused on the search space these days (even if that's not really Google's core business), Business Week is looking into what's next for search. They predict four main areas of investigation with the most obvious being personalized search. Many companies, including Google, are already working on this. Next up, they see better searching over time intervals, including more deep storage of historical web documents in order to better determine online trends. The third area, which Google has also spoken extensively about, is searching beyond the web, whether that's databases, your desktop or even non-computer related things (such as the names of people you met at a party last night). Of course, the most important improvement of all is the one they save for last: making search better. As good as online searching is right now, it still has some very serious limitations, many of which are being shown by the proliferation of search spam. No matter what, it looks like we'll have plenty of new developments to look forward in search. Update: A related article includes an interview with Dan Gruhl and Andrew Tomkins from IBM about their WebFountain search technology that is often described as a "Google-killer" (something they clearly hate).
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If they can do that, they've (at least partially) solved the problem of meaning. THAT would be useful without this "personalized" nonsense. On Monday I might want to know about the car, and on Wednesday the planet. "Personalized search" sounds like a trivial application of a very useful technique.
Am I missing something?
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