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If you search for "I want some pizza" in Google there are no results that take me closer to eating a pizza. "How much is powerset worth" doesn't give me any good information either. "Who writes venturebeat" doesn't bring up your name. "How much does an ipod nano cost" doesn't work, you have to type "ipod nano 1gb price."
There is plenty of room for improvement in general web search.
For example - I'm flying to NYC later this month, so I need to "search" for the best fares, flight times, hotel accomodations etc - keeping in mind not just what is available but also my personal needs and family/professional obligations (i.e. I'll trade spending more for arriving functional and in time to visit my sister). Google hasn't (yet) solved this, neither has great sites such as Kayak.com (though they are getting much, much better - they specifically don't usually show red eye options for some reason).
Even searches which I do on Google are often done in very different contexts - possibly even the nearly same search. I might be looking for "what movies are showing in San Francisco tonight" - and knowing Google treats it as a special search might search "movies San Francisco". Later that same day, however, I might want to write a blog post about movies that had been filmed in San Francisco - so I might start with the SAME search phrase "movies San Francisco" - but my purpose and context for the search has changed.
I've been performing electronic searches for over 16 years (yes, long before Google or the www, gopher space searches, online library catalogues etc) and the problem of search has always also been one of getting from how I think about a topic and how others, who have written resources on that topic have written and thought about it. Google does a good, but by no means perfect, job of addressing this - if I'm thinking in French (for example) and I search for "voiture" I'm highly unlikely to find any of the fantastic English sites for cars (or automobiles or autos etc).
And in anycase a single word search gives very little context to my search.
I wish Barney luck (full disclosure, I've corresponded with him over the years, long before he founded Powerset) - search has many aspects that could stand real improvement.
Shannon
Hey Shannon,
"the problem of search has always also been one of getting from how I think about a topic and how others, who have written resources on that topic have written and thought about it"
In the field of Information Science (nee Librarianship), this is referred to as "the art of the reference interview." Just a plug for my profession (insert smiley face here).
Here, let's take an example..
User is an accountant, searching for "finance". Should he gets the same results as a student searching for "finance"? Or how about a housewife typing "loans" vs a banker typing "loans"?
It is quite amazing to me peopel who call themselves technologists or are in the field believe search is anywhere close to solved.
And on a 10m VC, while it may seem to be allot it may not be that much. Infrastructure, employess, technology, marketing, advertising, etc. You can easily spend that money in less then a year when trying to compete with the 5 big SE's. The money is big, the competition is fearless, and the startup capital most likely to be much more significant then other industries.
A very interesting and informative article, and good comments from others. Even though this was written nearly 2 years ago, I suspect the search problems have yet to be solved. I'm just getting into website development and all the rest, but it seems to me that the search problem shouldn't be so difficult and the technology for it already exists. Why can't it just search the same way I search for stuff on my own computer. Lots of times i can't remember a file name or where I saved something, but I remember specific expressions contained in the file. I simply search for "A word or phrase in the file:" and presto, I find exactly what I'm looking for.
Thus, searching my computer using 'natural language', like: "Where's the best place for pizza in Jakarta.", I will find the file that has exactly that. Of course the search takes longer, but at least I find the file I'm looking for. Obviously doing this for the web is a massively bigger task, but the principles are basically the same aren't they. Essentially the search engine has to look for and find the expressions within the web pages rather than just in the meta tags.
Thanks and I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on this concept.
Brian