Search engines are like the Hubble telescope trying to quantify the entire universe. It’s pointless if we know what we’re looking for.

It’s a novel idea for a single company to want to quantify and store the web, but less and less is archive what we need. Just as students can rely on Wikipedia, teenagers can on Facebook. It’s about finding a core service around relevant content and resources. Find what’s applicable to you now, and utilizing it.

Search today works best with only a niche, or subset of content. Preferably my own personal content, be it Delicious, Evernote, or Gmail. Outside of these segments, search queries often serve specific purposes, e.g. finding a particular URL. So why are searches still providing an aggregate view of the web?

I’m Feeling Lucky

Specific searches need specific results. We should finally be at the age of dynamic search, or what Isaac Asimov suggested in The Last Question, a true decision engine.

Google should be playing the role of middleman and say based on each query, what the best result provided on the web currently is, predicted and scaled by the web as its backend knowledge.

+1

Maybe this is the upcoming role of +1, a better way to moderate the web and resources we’re actually using. Not necessarily a social means of communicating resources across the web, but instead one to articulate the precise resources relevant to you.