Yahoo & Microsoft Searching for Innovation

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COMMENT, USA — There’s a lot of fear and loathing about Microsoft buying Yahoo.

The initial discussion seems to focus on Yahoo as a search offering for Microsoft, to strengthen Microsoft against Google. That won’t deliver value.

Fact is Yahoo has a strong email brand, but few people use yahoo for search. Google is widely used, and mostly returns the best results.

Yahoo & Microsoft merger/takeover is not really a threat to competition as a younger, more powerful competitor is likely to emerge as the innovator in the search sector.

A young unknown start-up most likely with innovative ideas.

If we weren’t to ‘Google it’ what would we do?

Far more interesting in the medium term is so-called social search.

That is engines where humans rank and improve search engine algorithm results.

Example: When we search for a specific surname, humans would rank and categorize whether it as likely we meant the football player or the scientist or the suburb.

And perhaps, provide us with all 3 options to further refine the search. Google sort of does this, but Google is not master of this.

Microsoft can’t ‘get’ social search

Whilst no one can predict what the big gorilla in the cage of software, Microsoft, can or will do there seems to be on certainty. Search is not, cannot be, and will not be core business.

Reality is with Windows Vista, there is some movement away from the importance of the Operating System. Vista has had a lot of problems, and Apple or Linux sort of look better from a non-technical user view.

I use Windows XP, and my attempts to upgrade to Vista were tragi-comical. And I have installed a few operating systems over the years, so it should be ‘easy’.

Microsoft Office 2007 as an indicator of the Microsoft approach forces users to change their habits to ‘think-like-the-software’.

Search does not work that way. It’s opposite, in fact.

Search software must ‘think like the user’, not us think like the software.

So even if Microsoft buy Yahoo, the 2thinknow view is ‘great for shareholders’. But reality is, search innovation will come from ’social search’. And that probably means a start-up or a less known name becoming big!

Who?

Here’s a few ideas 2thinknow are watching.

Of course there’s Wikipedias Jimmy Wales, Wiki-style search.

Which may just work.And Google has slipped on its core search business, so there is a gap in the market for search. Customers are loyal, but not that loyal.

Especially when someone does search better.

CHRISTOPHER HIRE

Connect to Christopher Hire.

Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.

Filing. 2thinknow View - Trend Predictions, Americas, COMMENT, Emerging, Features, Innovation, Technology & Computing, USA, [English]
Tagged. eurekster, internet, mahalo, microsoft, search, search engines, social media, social search, Web 2.0, wiki, wink, yahoo