I wholeheartedly agree as well.

If Firefox truly cares about its user base, then it would do this at the drop of a hat: it would be a *HUGE* service to add value to its product.

On the other hand, I could also see this becoming a feature that IE could incorporate into its own browser, and thereby create a feature that the tech-savvy community would cherish.

I have already suggested that search engines should abandon Google’s hare-brained idea concerning “no-follow” links (or perhaps to expand the user’s ability to configure the search engine’s settings [which might, however, complicate the management of the index, such that only the computational "big players" could stay in the game]). Indeed I would also say that a search engine could discount links that are older then a year (and maybe even let the user “adjust” this setting to limit the search focus to perhaps 1 month, 1 week or 1 day). Indeed: I use such a search engine now and I am very happy with the results.

But to get back to your point: I think Firefox would “get it” rather quickly if/when Microsoft implemented such a meta-search bar into the next release of their IE.

I could also imagine that browser designers would perhaps do quite well to expand their “usability” features for direct navigation. For example, if I typed “cars” into the navigation bar (or the search bar? or the “domain” bar?) then the browser could present me a list of domains with that keyword (starting with exact matches — e.g. “cars.com”, “cars.net”, “cars.org”, “cars.info”, etc.) — perhaps with screenshots and/or additional info (this would perhaps also have the added feature of giving the term “browser” the significance of actually being a useful tool for browsing).

In this context, I have also recently mentioned here that Name Intelligence (which was recently acquired) has already amassed a large amount of historical data about domain names (and aboutus.org is also building this out further into somewhat of a “transparent” wiki/resource about domains). I could see Microsoft profiting greatly from a closer cooperation with such “grass roots” developments (and indeed such developments are very promising — because of the information is highly reliable, far more reliable than the crap that comes out of the bowels of google’s link spam machinery)

So since that point (1996) I’ve been a huge believer in metasearch.

But you’re right.. Google is not a believer in metasearch. That’s too open-source for Google, too useful for the community as a whole. They want to lock things down. It is against Google’s terms of service to “metasearch” Google:

http://wifi.google.com/ggterms.html

However, let’s read these terms of service very carefully. It says “no metasearch” in the context of “personal use only”. But what I am proposing would indeed be personal use only! I would not be reformatting Google results and sending them to other people. I would not be creating a new, public search engine based on Google’s results. I would only be using them, myself, directly. So under this terms of service, Firefox should be able to create the tool, that lets me do exactly what I want to. Because it’s not Firefox that is doing the search. It is *I* that am doing the search!

Later in this same terms of service, Google also says “no automated querying”. Well, what does that mean, exactly? My understanding is that automated querying is when you have thousands of keywords, and you send ‘em all of to Google, in a large batch, to see how Google performs.

That’s not what I, using the Firefox tool, would be doing. I would be executing only real queries, real things that I was searching for. There would be no “batch” about it, at all. Only one query at a time, and only driven by my own information need.

I mean, if what I am proposing above falls under the definition of “automated query”, then Firefox’s current interface also falls under automated query. Because when I type my query into the upper right search box, Firefox “automatically” reformats that query, calls the proper APIs, and “automatically” queries Google. The current Firefox tool does not query Google manually. It queries Google “automatically”.

So if doing that is already within Google’s terms of service, I am not adding anything to that, from Google’s perspective. Firefox is still only making ONE SINGLE query call, for my personal use only, to Google. It’s just that Firefox is also making that exact same ONE SINGLE call to Yahoo, also. And to Baidu. And to Yandex. But it is only a SINGLE call to Google.. nothing more than is already happening, through Firefox, right now!

And in terms of keeping track of where in various lists the results that I clicked appeared.. Google also says that I may not “us[e] any software which sends queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ‘ranks’ on Google for various queries;”

Well, since my purpose in querying Google, through the Firefox search bar, is not to determine how a website ranks, but to get an answer to my query, I think I fall well within the terms of service. Indeed, I don’t even know what webpage I’m looking for.. that’s the whole purpose of the query to begin with. So I would definitely not be against Google’s terms of service, here.

And, after my personal, non-automated query is executed, if Firefox simply stores where the various SERP pages were ranked, and then helps me correlate the ranks across various search engines, then so be it. That wasn’t the original purpose of my query. It’s a byproduct.

And if this byproduct is against Google’s terms of service, if Google won’t let me store information about the genuine, personal searches that I myself am doing, then that implies all other byproducts are against Google’s terms of service. What’s next, will Google demand that I stop bookmarking (storing in Firefox) any web page that I find via the results of a Google search? Because really, that’s all that is happening here. The Firefox tool is just letting me bookmark all of the results from every search that I’ve ever done, on any engine. For my own personal use.

So, IANAL, but it seems to me that most if not all of what I propose should be doable.

So when is Firefox gonna get to it?

I think this problem could easily be solved by people simply boycotting search engines that do not allow their results to be used in meta-search engines — I think that would be an easy way of establishing a level playing field.

But in many cases it is already much more effective to use targeted / vertical search properties (e.g. for downloads, download.com is a premiere search engine) — and that will probably also be increasingly true in the future (I think it won’t be long before we see the first engine to search for “Manhattan”, “swimming pool” across hotels.com, hotels.net, hotels.org, hotels.info, hotels.biz, hotels.mobi [and perhaps also various "jurisdictions" such as hotels.us, hotels.co.uk, hotels.de, etc.])….

So couldn’t we make the same argument to Firefox? That search box in the upper right corner should not be a “Google” box. But neither should it be a “Yahoo” box or a “Live” box or an “Ask” box or anything. It should be a “Firefox” box. There should be a preferences menu to let the user choose which of the underlying search engines Firefox should include in its search (i.e. a user in the U.S. might want to include G,Y,M,A, but not Baidu.. whereas a user in China would).

And then, as people use the Firefox search box, what Firefox should be doing is something similar to what Asa and I have been talking about… farming out the search to multiple engines, keeping track of where which documents appeared in the lists of the various engines, and *maybe* even mixing up the results of the various engines to show the most diversity.

As the search engine gets to know the users and estimates of the real intent get better, then the search engine can change the mix in the universal search.

And then, as the Firefox search interface gets to know the user, and which underlying mixture of search engines do the best job at meeting that user’s real intent (satisfying the user’s information need), then the Firefox interface can change the mix of the underlying engines.

That way, the user gets both the most relevant results AND gets to discover/explore/experiment with multiple search engines simultaneously. The Firefox search should also not hide this mixture from the user. The user should be able to know which engines are currently being favored by the Firefox mixture — and by “favored by Firefox” I do not mean “chosen by the people who are donating money to Firefox”. I mean “personalized to the user him/herself, based on their own searches and clicks”.

This Firefox search box should also be completely transparent, as to *why* certain mixtures are used, and not others. The mixture formulas, the statistics about the relative ranks across various engines, the averages and stddevs, etc. All of that should be exposed, transparent, open source.

Right?

If this is really about the user, really about the ultimate end goal of relevance, Firefox should be doing something like this. Asa never responded, but I don’t think Mozilla 1.0 did this. And I will check out opit’s Growe Toolbar suggestion, but again, I don’t think it does this, either. And yet I cannot think of a tool that would be more useful to me, the searcher, than a tool like this. Not chat, not horoscopes, not finance, not rich gui email. Give me a tool that really lets me control and understand my online experience, gives me a mixture, a diversity of information sources, and then personalizes it to the type of searching that I, myself, most often do. Which could be very different from the type of searching that you do.

One thing I’ve noticed, for example, is that both Yahoo and Google have very relevant results in the top 3. But the results themselves are different! Google finds one very good answer, and Yahoo finds a different, but equally good answer.

Firefox should help me find both of those answers, and let me discover the one that is most relevant to me, without having to first go to G, type my query, then go to Y, and type my query again. (And go to Live, and go to Ask, etc.)

Anyway, I apologize for the length of my responses…every once in a while I get into this mode. I hope I haven’t come across as too trollish; I am just passionate about this particular topic.

What do I think about Google’s universal search does not have a short answer. In general, being so far ahead of its competitors, when Google implements new ideas in search it errs on the side of making money, e.g., owning the second click.