Microsoft & Google Search Czars Speak Out On Mobile Search
Here’s some stimulating weekend reading. InformationWeek takes a look at Microsoft Live Search and Satya Nadella, Microsoft senior VP and the new face at the helm of Live Search and adCenter. Nadella admits Microsoft as late to the party, but points out the company has nonetheless succeeded in gaining market share at the expense of Yahoo and Google (that’s also the conclusion of Internet metrics firm Compete). Another sign that Microsoft is back with vengeance is the introduction of Windows Live Mobile Search 2.0. The downloadable version includes movie showtimes, more local, GPS support and turn-by-turn directions. (The mobile Web version supports image search and local directory listings.)
Nadella is upbeat on the outlook for mobile search. As he puts it: “We think mobile search is going to be a big growth market for us. It gives us an opportunity to start on a level platform. If you look at the reviews, we often come in first.” However, mobile search is a vertical among many (including mobile, local, entertainment, health, multimedia and commerce). “Instead of all search being just about one destination site and one set of results, we definitely believe in much broader based on vertical so we can make search much more contextual.”
Meanwhile, MIT Technology Review has published an excellent interview with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research. Norvig hints at what we can expect from the search experience in the years to come. FYI:The two biggest and best funded projects at Google are machine translation and voice search. “Translation and speech went all the way from one or two people working on them to, now, live systems,” Norvig says.
Multimodal is essential to mobile search and overcomes the shortcoming inherent in the mobile interface. “When you’re on cell phones, you can only see one link at a time. It really changes the game. There’s much more impetus for us to be correct, so we’re thinking about that kind of interaction there, and how you could use audio to present information.”
