Search-Engine Optimization News (SEO)'s Andy Beal interviewed Microsoft's Robert Scoble. He has very interesting views on what lies ahead in termes of technology, user-interface and possibilites.

Here are some excerpts:

• Because hard drives keep getting bigger (a 60GB drive at Fry's Electronics is $60 now -- in three years we predict it'll be $20 and you'll see 500GB drives for less than $100). It's easier to create files now than it is to find them. Today search tools like X1 are most interesting because they index your hard drive and make it easy to search for email and files on your local drives. Microsoft Research has been working on a tool called "Stuff I've Seen" too, which is also quite interesting (both let you search email as well as files on your hard drive). But, these tools don't go far enough. First, they are bolted on top of the operating system. So, while they are indexing, your system often sees slowdowns. They can't design those to work properly with the operating system and with other applications that might need processor time. Plus, to really make search work well search engines need metadata and metadata that's added by the system keeping track of your usage of files, as well as letting application developers add metadata into the system itself. In a lot of ways, weblogs are adding metadata to websites. When a weblog like mine links to a web site, we usually add some more details about that site. We might say it's a "cool site" for instance. Well, Google puts those words into its engine. That's metadata. (Technically metadata is "data about data"). Now if you search for "cool site" you'll be more likely to find the site I just linked to. So, you can see how Google's engine is helped by metadata. But, we haven't been able to apply those lessons to the thousands of files on your hard drive. That will change.
  
  
• Let's go forward a couple of years to the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. In Longhorn we're building a new file storage system, code-named WinFS. With WinFS searching and metadata will be part of the operating system. For instance, you could just start typing in an address bar "W" and "E" and "D" and "D" and anything that started with WEDD would come up to the top. For instance, your wedding documents, spreadsheets, and photos.
  
  
• Now, if we're talking about the Internet, then Google has done an awesome job so far. I use Google dozens of times a day. Will MSN [search] be able to deliver more relevant results than Google? I don't know. Certainly that's not the case today. Will that change tomorrow? I'm waiting to see what the brains at MSN do. One thing I do see is that in Longhorn, search will be nicer for customers. Google is working on making its toolbar the best possible experience. We're working on a whole raft of things too. I'm very excited about the future of search, no matter which way things go.
  
  
• For Internet searches, I see social behavior analysis tools like Technorati becoming far more important. Why? Because people want different ways to see potentially relevant results. Google took us a long way toward that future as their Google's results are strongly influenced by how many inbound links a site has. But, now, let's go further, even further than Technorati has gone. Let's identify who really is keeping the market up to date on a certain field and give him/ her more weight. I also see that search engines that search just specific types of content (like Feedster - are going to be more important (Feedster only searches RSS and Atom syndication feeds). Oh, and users are going to demand new ways of exporting searches. Google showed us that with News Alerts. Enter in a search term, like "Microsoft" and get emailed anytime a news source mentions Microsoft. Feedster goes further than that. There you can build an RSS feed from a search term. I have several of those coming into my RSS News Aggregator and find they are invaluable for watching what the weblogs are saying about your product, company, or market. For instance, one of my terms I built a feed for is "WinFS" -- I'll be watching to see how many people link to this article and if any of you have something interesting to say I'll even link back.

Categorie(s)/Catégorie(s): Tech and Web

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