The answer of course is search, although most people who will read this will have never heard of Nitin Karandikar.
Search is in my blood these days, more specifically vertical search and project Phoenix which I'm currently working on. Every where I turn these days people are talking about search. Today I've come across a trio of interesting blog postings related to search and offer them as worth reading.
In the first Tim O'Reilly talks about "What Would Google Do?" and it's more about innovation, Web 2.0 and less specifically about search but the core of the articles comes from data gathered from Google services including search. Web 2.0 is more than just a buzz word, it's a fundamental shift in how we interact online. Quoting Tim;
... it goes right to the heart of what makes Web 2.0 applications so interesting: they are alive, or as close to it as you can get with a computer. They learn from and interact directly with their users (and more specifically, provide services to individual users that benefit from the aggregate interaction of the system with all of its users.)
The second posting I came across today is by Nitin Karandikar whose compiled a list of the "Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google". The list is impressive and covers many of the topics I'm personally interested in. As Phoenix is developed it will be interesting to see how many of these groups it fits into.
The last posting comes from Search Engine Watch and deals with what Bill Gates will be doing in his last 18 months at Microsoft. It seems he wants to focus on search and building up Microsoft's search presence.
When people go to the Internet, they have a task in mind. And it's not just to see a list of links. This is not a, 'Hey, I'm paid to go do treasure hunts.' They want to organize a trip, or learn about a topic, and the idea that we can capture things at that task level, and through the magic of software make that far better. And in particular when it's where you want to buy something, that the people who want to buy something that the people who want to advertise, who want to offer up that maybe they're the place that you want to do business with, I think we can make that far better.
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