Over the last several years, I’ve seen search engines come and go, left and right. Remember Cuil, Mahalo, Searchme, anyone?
There are reasons most people don’t use these.
- You have to go to their URL and search from there.
- They suck at giving decent results.
- They’re too slow or too niche-focused for most.
However, that’s not stopping people from getting the information they want.
HOW are they getting that information:
- RSS Feeds
- Facebook/ LinkedIN/FriendFeed
- Search API’s – such as Yahoo BOSS
What would have taken a good chunk of time to develop, even a year ago, can be created in less than 5 minutes with these user friendly API frameworks, such as this search aggregator one from Daylife.
Or this one, I whipped out in just minutes as well.
christmas shopping widget
Now, I know this puppy isn’t perfect, but that’s not the point. When the non-techies are able to create custom search engines for themselves, search via the usual routes is bound to suffer. Do I know what the future holds for the big 3 (aside from Yahoo, which I think is in SERIOUS trouble)? nope. Will open access to source code and API’s start to be limited, or provided for a fee? Oh, man I hope not – but I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
