Web Search Industry Challenged to Innovate
September 5, 2011
Google is the ultimate search solution, right? But have you noticed a curious lack of new ideas in the world of Web search? If so, you’re not alone. The critcism of Google won’t die.
Network World reports, “Computer scientist calls for Web search shake-up.” It seems that Oren Etzioni, who teaches computer science at the University of Washington, feels creative juices are in short supply in the Web search field. His commentary in Nature is only available to subscribers or those willing to pay per article, but writer Bob Brown provides a glimpse:
The main obstacle to progress ‘seems to be a curious lack of ambition and imagination,’ Etzioni writes in the piece.
The search critic, is “[Dr. Oren] Etzioni, who directs the University of Washington’s multidisciplinary Turing Center, calls on search engineers and others to ‘think outside the keyword search box.’” He is also working in the field of search and retrieval as well.
We learned:
[Dr. Etzioni] envisions more voice-based search that relies on increasingly intelligent computers like IBM’s Jeopardy-winning Watson and technologies like the Turing Center’s ReVerb software that can figure out how online information relates to each other.
Dr. Etzioni asserts that some changes will continue to be prompted by the move to smaller screens. Despite his criticism, he sees a bright future for the industry. He points to intelligent search developments in shopping search, like Decide.com, as an example of where we’re headed.
Eventually.
Cynthia Murrell, September 5, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
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