Desktop Search Bubble… Redux

For past 24 hours the blogsphere has been abuzz with all the talk about Microsoft’s new search tool. And Yahoo’s tool, and AOL’s desktop search and on and on. Now from where I stand, the whole discussion is about the features – aka speeds and feeds. How about anyone mentioning the fact, that most of these search products are a reaction to the innovation by X-1, CopperNIC, and Blinkx and other start-ups, or the fact that someone inside these giants went …. whoops, we need that. Or what about the product saturation, or disillusionment, or concern about privacy… not much debate on that. Having said that, what will be the next whoops moment for the giants? When some tiny start-up comes up with natural language query and answer system. Will we see a similar scramble amongst the so called big guns? You bet we will. And if what I have seen of the products from Microsoft and Google, it will be a long time before they come to grips with plain vanilla desktop search.