A week after finally dropping Google as its search partner, Yahoo has set up new research labs in a drive to improve its own search technology, reports News.com. Gary Flake, the company's principal scientist, tells the site: "Today, search engines are like the 8-track tapes of the music industry... We're very much at the beginning of an industry here, and the amount of innovation in the next 10 years will be mind boggling."
It's widely expected Microsoft will also have improved its search functionality by the end of this year, and the current market-leader, Google, is unlikely to relinquish its top-dog status without a fight - even if it appears to have its eye off the ball at the moment. It's going to be a fascinating year in search, even if much of the innovation is driven by the realisation that search technology can be turned very profitably towards serving up advertising. Not that I'm convinced this is a problem, provided we get better search results as the payoff...
