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.

Live.com is feature Mumbai as the background image today.

Quoted: Find exactly what you are looking for - FAST! With Live Search.

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.

Reread this after a long time. Definitely a classic -- both for the quality of thinking (duh) and how clearly and succinctly it is written.

Bill Gates is not 100% retired from Microsoft after all and is still "working on search".

Quoted: However the news isn’t all bleak, as Microsoft believes strongly in the potential advantages provided by Powerset. And they’ve got another ally, too: Bill Gate. Scott Prevost, Powerset’s general manager, was quoted as saying that "Bill has definitely not retired for us". Gates, who has stepped down from day to day operations, has said that he planned to continue to work on search.

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.
...
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 ;-)

Quoted: On his final full day at Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates went on stage to reminisce with his longtime friend Steve Ballmer, and neither man could hold back tears as Ballmer handed Gates a large scrapbook as a farewell present.
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One of those will be Web search, where Microsoft lags far behind Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in market share. With an acquisition of Yahoo now again apparently off the table, Gates threw his weight Friday behind a strategy of assembling a team of smart people and combining Microsoft's own breakthroughs with what competitors are already doing.