Category: Of Note in Search Biz

Bing.

Yahoo.

Back when I was reporting the book, I remember a meeting I had with Gary Flake, then the lead technologist at Overture, now a Fellow at Microsoft running Live Labs, responsible for stuff like Seadragon, Photosynth, and now, Pivot, an experimental approach to large datasets that attempts to rethink some fundamental approaches to what we understand search to be today.  

Back in 2004, I asked him why we couldn’t move forward in search interface, which struck me as a major issue (and still does). Gary looked at me ruefully and said something I’ve never forgotten: “If only I had just one modal dialog box…”

I’m so focused on Web 2 and FM right now I can’t grok this. But you guys can – Aardvark, which I have written about in the past and will present at Web 2 next week, has launched a social search function based on their growing people-powered network. What do you all think?

Google increases Month/Month search share

Comscore’s September US search data suggests Google took some share lost over the last few months, which gives us confidence in our Q3 paid click growth ests. (12% Y/Y worldwide). Bing’s share of US search also increased, though share gains were lower than previous months as September is typically a relatively weaker month for travel, a vertical in which Microsoft has tried to differentiate itself.