Another insightful post from SmoothSpan, this time on Microsoft and search.

Quoted: "That was the most astounding software demo I've every seen," Wozniak tells Tech Ticker after seeing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Bing at the All Things Digital Conference here.

I do think search + community could work together well (duh). However, I think some aspects of Google's implementation are confusing. And, I'm surprised Google didn't launch it as an experimental feature first.

Specific complaints:
1) Promote/Remove: I don't really get the value. If there is value, it is certainly not immediately obvious. Does promoting it just affect me, or does it affect everybody? What if I click remove, and the underlying page changes to the point that it now might be valuable? I just want Google to do the right thing without me having to train it.
2) I have a "Note This" and "Comment" links at the bottom of my search results. That "feels" a little redundant.

Also, I wonder why Google just didn't keep the Star/Share metaphors that they use on their other products.

Quoted: Bucket tests and experimental products are one thing. But to mess with the real Google search is serious stuff. Why did they do ...

Latest post to the blog.

Quoted: I recently gave the following talk to the Chinese Institute of Engineers on the Microsoft campus. The talk is an introduction to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), focusing on Search Advertising and Search Engine Optimization. I also explain the search business model and ranking algorithm to the extent that is needed to effectively implement SEM.

It is amusing that this point has been lost in all the hype about Cuil.

Quoted: I’ve got a theory: no one can create a better search engine than Google, simply because Google does not only search websites, but - through its domination of the market - the entire web bends to Google’s will because every web site wants to be positioned well on Google. Therefore, any competitor that may arise - however large its index, however good its algorithms - can only hope to be nearly as good as Google.

Is a SERP (search engine result page) API a good idea? I think it could be so long as the corresponding results are easier -- not harder -- to digest than they are now. Google does have co-op, which is a SERP API of sorts, but it is quite limited.

Quoted: If these scenarios were possible, then you might argue that all the smart stuff that Google's doing to improve their SERP (seach engine result page) - like making YouTube video thumbnails, or Google Image Search shortcuts - could be done automatically by the people building the underlying sites and integrating with a SERP API.
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Without this, the SERP is a walled garden platform that gets slow, incremental features based on whatever Google chooses to implement. And that's the furthest thing from open, yet it's also not Googley to let people clutter up the SERP. So we'll see how this tension evolves over time ;-)

A contrarian view.

Quoted: They may need new leadership to do that. But selling this asset to Microsoft just because they had the wrong leadership and probably still have the wrong leadership is a mistake.

It does feel like Microsoft's main gameplan in the consumer Web space over the last couple years has been to play catchup.

Quoted: So let's assume that Google has won at search, or close enough to make no difference. Is Microsoft better off trying to reimplement cat and ls, or trying to figure out what's still missing from the Internet Operating System? While they are locked in penis envy, all the really cute girls are going out with startups :-)
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