The problem with search engines isn’t primarily improved technology. The technology is decent at the moment, but the problem is that search engines treat information as a product. That is fine as far as it goes… when I’m seeking products.

Search engines could give people better results with present technology, but they’d have to be willing to be more transparent and give more control to the user. Unfortunately, that won’t happen. Even if you improve the technology, the search engine companies wouldn’t want to give up their control. In fact, new technology will allow companies to give you even more biased results.

You make a good point about search engines not being the only gatekeepers these days. I’m happy for that. You can even see some search engines starting to include social network capabilities. It wouldn’t surprise me if in the future search engines and social networks become more closely intertwined.

Nevertheless, with the rise of social networks, regular search engines aren’t the only gatekeepers of the information. So no u can leverage social networks to expose your info

However, part of the problem isn’t simply interface or other barriers between humans and computers. I just blogged about the problem of not being able to find something even when you know exactly what you’re looking for.

Search engines have various biases of their own that may or may not match the biases of the person doing the search. I’d like search engines to be more transparent about their biases and to allow more control over how information is being prioritized.

Hoy Alex Barrera ha escrito un interesante artículo sobre ideas sobre el futuro de los buscadores . Me ha gustado el tema de Brain Machine Interfaces……

About 70% of search queries are very simple, one or two words, maybe three. So those people will be happy for what Google delivers.

The rest are complex queries, where research could lead to better products. I beleive that search is a kid yet.

Interesting stuff about Brain Machine Interfaces

Well, while I do agreee with the KISS concept, I don’t think Google’s search engine is simple at all. Nor their contextual ads or sponsored links. There is a lot of engineering behind that.

The concept? Yeah, very simple and clear. Very simple interface and ease of use. I’m not suggesting that this new idea has to be ugly and complex hehe The point is that, we tend to think about the future as something impossible and very complex. Truth is that we say that because, well, it’s the future and we can’t do it now

On the other hand, one thing is an idea, and a very different thing is the execution. I spell the idea, I leave the execution to much smarter people

ok, ok, I have to be serious becaouse if not Alex may think that I don’t take his posts seriously and be mad at me.

For me, the magic formula is “Keep it simple and stupid”. It worked with Google with link stuff, and will work for the next big thing. Back then at 2002, if you asked researchers, their answers would be natural language, neural networks, etc…

But it was just as simple as analyziing the way people linked to each other.

First of all, thanks for the pingback

Indeed, it’s a bit into the future, that’s why most people will probably dub it as crazy, but as you say I think it’s going to be a very hot niche in some time.

I believe that if we don’t think about the future we wont move forward. Sometimes we just need to step ahead of everyone else

That’s an interesting approach to search but something that will likely get some more attention one day.

Mark