According to Andrei Broder, Yahoo’s VP of emergent technologies, the future of search will encompass more push than pull. The future of search may not include a search box.
Search today is confined to putting in something and getting something back, a pull model. The next stage is for information to come in a context without actively searching, a push model.
What Andrei proposes here is way ahead of its time given the current limitations of computing. Computers would require the gathering of large amounts of data to make the recommendations as he’s suggesting.
To gather this information, it would mean giving up some privacy. With the recent uproar over privacy issues with Google Desktop Search, it certainly seems like that time won’t come anytime soon as people value their privacy to give up those freedoms.
People are also leery of Big Brother monitoring their online activities through data-mining. A Department of Justice request to turn over search records was rejected by Google even though AOL, MSN & Yahoo agreed. The demands for these records reminded people of how much information they were putting out on the internet.
It is certainly a compelling thought that computers may one day be able to offer relevant suggestions based on past behavior and need. One would likely have to stike a balance between privacy and the quick access to relevant, useful data in order to truly solve our search needs.