The future of search, no one knows right now.

I read a blog in which Jerry Yang was asked about the future of search. Jerry is one of the founders of Yahoo and is still active in the company. It's interesting that whenever the captains of the Internet are asked about the future of search, they invariably talk about what they just released. So it was on the blog I read. He talked about local search and personalized search as being future trends and that may be true, but those are also products Yahoo offers right now. That really isn't the future of search.

The truth about the future of search is that it doesn't lie in what's happening right now, or it wouldn't be the future, would it? I have certain beliefs about search in the future that I'm sure I'm wrong about, but why can't these guys at the top tell more about the future. If anyone would know, they would, right? I think the reason they rely on answering with what they're working on right now is that they have no idea. Over and over again, these tech guys as brilliant as they are, have been wrong about future trends except for maybe Steve Jobs, who seems to have a better feel for what's really going on down the road. Remember all those silly quotes Bill Gates made in the 80's and early 90's? No one knows the future of search, even these guys.

So as a result of no one knowing any better than anyone else what the future holds, then let me make a couple of bold predictions on the future of searching the internet.

• Search will be more intrusive and personalized. It will be available throughout your computer seamlessly to the internet. It will cause privacy problems.
• Search companies will supply their technology to companies that repackage it to promote their own business. Search will be a wholesale item for resellers if you like.
• Search engines will try to assert themselves with more future control, pushing out competition, but won't be able to.
• Paid ads will go the way of the banner ad as people will get sick of them. Something else will replace it.

I know these are very general, but I think that over the next few years, this is what we will see. It couldn't be any worse than anything anyone else has said so far.

Being real, being humble, enjoying marketing online...RealWebMarketing.com

Subscribe to this RSS news feed.