A very interesting article in the New York Times about startups in Silicon Valley trying to grab a piece of the search market, and an even better post in Read/Write Web categorizing the different approaches of those startups are taking to try to beat the big players:
- Better technology: either through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) or using people’s votes to rate results
- Better interface: which includes previewing, clustering results or visualization improvements
- Vertical search: search focused on a narrow segment (classifieds, jobs, blogs, music, etc)
Read/Write Web is asking users what technology they think has the best chances of beating Google, people-powered search seems to be winning. In my opinion vertical search is going to be huge, the question is if it will be the startups who take that market or Google (and the other big players) will be fast enough to grab it… I bet some of those startups will be acquired.
theSandbox 
Leave a Reply