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January 25, 2005

Simple stuff... like online search.

This post by Whit McNamara made me think of a few articles I read recently in QUEUE Magazine. It was from the April 2004 edition (ok, so I'm way behind in some of my reading - I've got three kids, gimme a break...), but it is a great article Why Writing Your Own Search Engine is Hard. There are a few other great articles in that issue as well, so check the listing.

I agree with Whit - for as hard as the "simple" problems can be to solve - in business, new competition can always try to copy a businss model fairly easily - it usually just takes money.

But, for the "simple" problems, money doesn't always win the day. Granted, Google has boatloads of money, but to me, their assests have always rested on their innovation and culture that supports it.

And while many folks ponder the future of online search, and new players take stakes in the online search game - Google leads or at least inspires yet again with todays announcement of "Google Video Search".

As I understand it, Google has indexed offline, not online, content - in this case the Closed Captioning logs or databases of PBS, Fox News, and other networks. A search results in up to 5 still frames of original broadcast for each match. Google continues to apply the concepts of search to offline areas (via online means) which I find exciting and profound.

I can't wait for the release of "Google Brain" search around 2050, when Google comes out with an implant that I can "install" and subsequently index my own memory. I'm not sure I can wait that long for something like that... :)

Posted by gcrgcr at January 25, 2005 10:41 PM

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Hey, Tom -

Thanks for the link --

> I can't wait for the release of "Google Brain"
> search around 2050, when Google comes out with
> an implant that I can "install" and subsequently
> index my own memory. I'm not sure I can wait
> that long for something like that...
>
Yeah, I have geeky little thoughts about that one, too...the need for "Common Sense Data Access Protocol" to handle it, the potential for a brain -> database link, the *really* cool epistemological questions like "how would the brain handle information that wasn't acquired through the metadata-rich process of learning, but rather though some sort of "dump" interface...I think I need a new hobby. :)

Posted by: whit at January 26, 2005 4:26 PM

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