N"e"xt generation search - Necessary evil or necessarily an evil

What is it that Google, Yahoo and MSN have in common. They all do search the same way as others except that google has gradually become the unanimous winner when it comes to the no. of areas from where it gathers its data from. 

So what is it that is still lacking in the search results?
What if I want my results to be more coherent to what I think and want rather than get the similar mundane results that every other user gets?

Am sure with the web that the search engines and others are trying to build around people they would certainly know in times to come each and every users every single need. So how about explaining it with an example - We have an user who searches for the term "baseball", considering that this user is based out of Chicago and he has bought online tickets through the google desktop, of the much awaited Cubs v/s Sox match already he might be looking for more details about the two teams under discussion rather than getting the results on places that sell baseball bat. Another scenario my friend on Orkut has been visiting websites that talk about the countries where baseball is played as he and I have to together write an article on baseball playing nations. So my search results on Google Chrome (Just to make sure no doubts are left, Google took full control of Orkut in 2007 )should be able to throw results that match results similar to that of my friends.

This might sound very sweet and easy and a lot of people will give a thumbs up to a search like this. Scour a new generation search engine which is trying to give users a similar opportunity to get customized search (luckily they are still leaving it to the users to rate and tag search pages) like this but aren't we giving too much intelligence to the system. Isn't technology being empowered way too much so that the system might some day start thinking beyond humans could imagine. I keep going back to thinking what John Mc Carthy must have had in mind while coining this term and can the 2001 movie on AI be a reality in times to come. Though I am a strong advocate of Google but at times I really think that Google someday might become an evil beyond what people could have thought of.

Comments

Shreya Natekar said…
Interesting thought.
AI I am sure is already in the making as far as collaborative searches or online business goes. But I am sure it is gong to end up surving the end consumers better and effectively.

'E'-vil... it is going to be a perspective. Convinience and eaze is good at many times and hence always welcomed but sometimes can be an over burden and difficult to handle by novice people.
November 2, 2008 at 7:05 PM
theotherside said…
I fully agree... Google has been storing the database of all searches an individual does since quite sometime now.. They claim it is to give more pointed results to the individual. But this is certainly unethical and breach of piracy. And if a Google employee wnats to take advantage of it, he easily can. But then this does not stop us from using Google search does it?? I think we are paying too heavy a price for the so called convenience....
November 11, 2008 at 9:31 AM
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