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Section seven - The future Online Information Review - Apr 00 - The evolution of web searching Micro-payments for searches? Searching outsourced? Zingo! WAP! Wow! - Portals go mobile Search Engine Standardisation Order vs Chaos Micro-payments for searches? Jakob Nielsen predicts '..that in the future we will have micro-payments for search. Realistically, to provide quality information over the long term requires serious effort. Companies have to be compensated for providing that'. (16) If users are to be charged micro-payments then they are going to start demanding better refinement technologies for their searches. Much of the search technology innovation over the last eighteen months has come from second-generation search companies. By focusing on portalisation and ecommerce the first generation of search firms have ceded control of technological innovation to their younger cousins. According to data from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and research firm IPO monitor, in the last year search engine companies have raised more than $274.7M in private funds and another $282M in public offerings. Almost all of these funds are going to this second generation of search firms. (17) back to the top Searching outsourced? What is interesting is that none of the 'second generation' search companies have adopted the portal model so enthused by their predecessors, the 'big 5'. Also, if the main portals wish to introduce micro-payments for searches, these second-generation search companies will provide the refinement technologies. In the evolution of web searching this has created a symbiotic relationship between the two generations - to succeed in attracting as many users as possible, to generate as many e-commerce sales opportunities as possible, the first generation of search firms will continue to focus their efforts on portalisation and ecommerce. However, they will need the new search technology offered by the second generation firms to provide consumers with the search requirements they demand - search requirements that in turn will fuel ecommerce consumer buying. The second-generation search firms need the portals to create a center of gravity that will attract the consumers who will use their search services. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is quite possible that one, or more, of the 'big 5' search portal firms will drop out of the sporadic, yet ongoing search index size war. Instead, they may decide to contract out all of its search functionality to second-generation firms whose core focus is providing better search technology. By co-opting the Open Directory, and relegating the results from its own index to secondary to those from the Open Directory, Lycos has hinted at the shape of things that may yet come. However, until the market matures somewhat, the 'big 5' first-generation search portals may feel uncomfortable about completely relinquishing control of search functionality. Instead, they may develop their existing relationships with second-generation firms into an outsourced/partnership model with clearly defined service level agreements etc. Such a strategic re-alignment of their business operations would be in line with current business process outsourcing (BPO) trends and would prove popular with their institutional investors. back to the top Zingo! WAP! Wow! - Portals go mobile No this isn't some headline snatched from a Batman cartoon. Using Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), search sites and publishers alike will be able to extend their reach beyond the PC to mobile phones and other hand-held devices such as PDAs. One such portal already launched is Zingo, which has been jointly developed by Lucent Technologies and Netscape. Aimed at telecommunications providers, Zingo also enables HTML pages to be converted into VXML (Voice Extensible Mark-up Language) for audio applications on hand-held devices. Coupled with the reduced broadband demand that XML promises to deliver, the future of information retrieval can be anywhere you need it. Search Engine Standardisation Launched by Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch, the Search Engines Standards Project aims to foster standards amongst the major search services. Participants include representatives from the largest web search engines, academics and industry analysts. Some of the common standards that the project has helped to develop include a common syntax for the command to narrow a search by a specific web site, and the ability for all major search sites to locate an exact URL within their indexes using the URL: command. Future proposals include additional commands for searching and meta tags for controlling search indexing robots. This voluntary initiative neatly parallels voluntary efforts to develop standardised XML tag sets for specific industries and interest groups. It would appear that the connectivity provided by the Internet is also encouraging greater collaboration for the benefit of all. These and other collaborative efforts (such as the Open Directory) represent admirable attempts by selfless individuals to create a degree of order from the chaos of the ever-growing digital morass. back to the top  Order vs Chaos The greatest cosmological conundrum is the struggle between order and chaos. The second law of thermodynamics suggests that the universe, in expending energy and thus generating entropy (the degree of disorder in a closed system), is degenerating towards a state of total chaos. However, the Darwinian concept of evolution suggests that biological processes are progressive, evolving from simple single cell organisms to a planetary biosphere of incredible organisational complexity. (18) Order from chaos. The tension between these two diametrically opposing forces can also be witnessed on the Internet. The relentless growth in activity on the web is resulting in an endless electronic ether of shifting data bytes. This energy expenditure is degenerating the web into a state of digital chaos. Against this are the commendable efforts of paid indexers and volunteers attempting to create an ordered structure from this ether. Yet could the web yet prove to be self-organising - just like any other biological system that evolves to greater complexity and organisation? Sounds crazy. However in the issue of Nature on 9th September 1999, not one but two, research papers were published that surprised everyone. (19) Mathematicians had expected the Internet to follow the model of random inanimate networks. Not so. Both research papers discovered that the Internet did indeed appear to be 'evolving' and that its growth resembled organic life. The Internet is evolving according to the universal 'power principle' of physics. This power principle governs the order found in many things ranging from plants to galaxies. Knowing this will help search engine providers develop better algorithms that exploit the predictive behaviour of systems governed by the power principle. Now emerging from its nascent stages, the web may evolve into a highly organised, vastly diverse and complicated system - an eerie parallel to our real world. Finally: References and Company Profiles

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