This morning I was reading a techcrunch article about Google squared and Wolfram alpha and the evolution of search engines into a new structured, semantically aware direction. To quote from article:
..a search for “camera” sorts the results in different columns by images, description, and manufacturer, resolution, etc.. You can refine results by clicking on a particular column such as manufacturer. A search for “rollercoasters” sorts results by name, image, description, height, length, and number of inversions...The problem that I see with such an approach is that the web search engines are slowly trying to become meta search engines and almost trying to substitute the content on the web and in the process getting distracted from their core functionality. If I want a list of digital cameras with their description, price range, reviews, ratings, resolution etc I can go to a know review site or just search google for review sites and go to one. eg http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/ does a good job at providing those details and much more in a very organized fashion. Why do I need Google to do that only worse with lesser info for me. If I want to research roller coasters I could go to http://www.rcdb.com/census.htm to find organized roller coaster info, reviews, pictures, details etc.
So the point is that when I have such excellent sources and specialized search engines, why do I need Google to try and do the same in a much less useful way. What Google really needs to do is to make sure when I search for 'list of roller coasters', the above site is the first one in the results and not 'a list of roller coaster records in wikipedia.(roller coaster db was the 9th result). So my recommendation to Google would be to work on improving its core search engine capabilities. When I search for 'list of digital cameras' dont give me list of digital camera brands' in Wikipedia or Deallist page about digital camera deals, instead put that cnet info somewhere in top 5(right now it doesnt figure in top 10 results).
So Google, we dont need Squared, we need a better Google Web Search.
...and they are delivering that with Google search options.
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The point is that people need more relevant and accurate results in the first search, rather than re-search or slicing and dicing the search results that Google Search Options provides.
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