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Iguana - 10:44 am on Dec 21, 2004 (gmt 0)

I think I understand what Charles H. Ferguson is saying. He seems to be saying that Google needs to develop commercial APIs to their search - because this is what Microsoft has done before with windows and their applications and made (nearly) all the facilities available to developers.


But I don't regard 'Web Search' as that important a function to require APIs. I still regard it as a way to quickly access the statically delivered content on the web. Obviously Google already have a developers API (with very limited usage) and Adsense websearch. Amazon have their new e-commerce webservice that allows you access to their search results (Google-derived and Alexa enhanced) that is in beta and may be subject to a charge in the future. Both of these seem to be allowing websites to incorpoate their own websearch facilities. I don't think they will be taken up in large enough numbers to have a big impact on searches done.

What he is talking about is the next generation of search - the one that includes the 'hidden web' desktop PC file systems, emails, handhelds, and Linux. To provide a cross-platform access to all of this would be nice - but hardly a 'killer app'. I haven't bothered to download Google or MS desktop search - I know where my files are and what they contain and can use windows explorer to check them. I only need a deep search of previous web pages/emails/files about every 2 weeks. If you said I could search and access the text of any book ever written, any software, any album details (cover/real lyrics/ track listing/sample), access MP3s of my music and the music collections of any friends (wishing all my vinyl was converted to MP3) - then I would be excited both in my working and home life. But copyright prevents a lot of this and I couldn't afford to actually purchase these as products.

I just fail to make that jump from search being a quick, sometimes frustrating, way to access web content to being the nervous sytem that unifies my informational world. In the long term (10-20 years?) it will be that. But for the next few years, when the Google/MS competition will take place, it is the web search that will be the battleground. I used to think the real crux could be how you access the search - when the browser disappears from Windows and becomes part of the desktop then Microsoft can make it awkward for people to change the default search from MSN to Google. It didn't work last time with the built-in IE search but maybe will work better this time. Luckily enough Google should have the financial clout to quickly stop Microsoft using any unfair tactics, unlike some other companies in the past who have had to wait 5 years for their multi-million dollar settlements that are just loose change for Mr Gates.

I realise that I am holding up my hand and saying I just don't have the imagination/foresight to see how APIs and extending the search content is the next step. Given that Microsoft won't be able to just leverage control of the major operating system to eliminate Google, I keep on coming back to the thought that for the next 5 years it's the same old, same old thing - quality of the search results. All the pain of the Florida update, the obfuscations that have reduced the power of Pagerank, the 'filters/sandbox/hilltop/ anchor text/ over-optimisation penalties' - has failed to produce better Google search results. Google needed to move from a keyword-based search with Pagerank to something else (now that Pagerank was understood and spammed rather than natural web linking). I really believed that Google was going to move to the next stage and figure out what a page was about before serving it as a result as opposed to ever more elaborate counts/weighting of keywords in the document. But they have failed. I think that Yahoo and Teoma may now be its equal and that Microsoft may catch up in a year. Google could become a minor player long before the big battle over control of access to digital content is fought - if one of the other players comes up with a search engine that actually understands something about what the user is searching for.

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