Lord of the Pings
“Three Rings for the major search engines under the sky, Seven for the alternatives in their halls of stone, Nine for the smallest search engines doomed to die, One for the new UI on its white throne in the Land of Search where the Interface lies. One UI to rule them all, One UI to find them, One UI to bring them all together and in the future bind them - in the Land of Search where the algorithms lie.”
This quest for the Unifying or Universal (which is better?) Interface is a search for a new interface that will solve the problem of too many alternative search engines sharing too little market share. These alternative search engines, while their names are constantly changing, seem incapable of gaining more than 5% of search market share combined.
But as much as I enjoy talking about this topic, this journey will only be successful as a Fellowship of authors, thinkers, programmers, and leaders. Some have already been chosen by Fate:
Richard MacManus the Gray; Editor-in-Chief of one of the world’s most popular blogs Read/WriteWeb. It was this wise old Wizard who published the first “Top 100 Alternative Search Engines” list, and created this AltSearchEngines blog. What little I know about blogging I learned from him.
Charles Knight and Kaila Colbin. I am the editor of this blog, AltSearchEngines. Kaila is the blogger for VortexDNA. “I blog for whom I choose,” Kaila once whispered to me. While rumors about our relationship abound, remember, they are only rumors.
One Alt search engine founder I’ll just call “Rodo,” who let me see his brand new interface design just a few hours ago.
It’s no secret that KoolTorch has invented an Interface that allows the user to see up to 100 search results in a single view on one page. KoolTorch is the work of two guys whose initials are, oddly enough, R & D!
As anyone who has read or seen the Lord of the Rings would know, there is still more room in the Fellowship. We still have no Boromir or Gimli or Sam, not to mention dozens of other characters. The number of blogs discussing potential solutions for the plight of the Alts is increasing. Just as in the original story, the first thing that the very diverse, but equally endangered inhabitants of Middle Earth did was to call a Council, with representatives of Vertical Search, Visualization, Semantic Search, and the race of Human-powered search engines. (”Mahalo” is actually Westernese for “I’m starving; you?”) Work on this Council of Search Engines of all of the diverse categories is already under way. Keep watching this blog for more information about that.
There are also larger entities that are awakening to the threat of the One Search Power eliminating the Alts; a Gondor and a Rohan. Three search engines, such as KoolTorch, are currently at work with completely different designs. (And I have my own.)
And then there is Aragorn. The selfless, ruggedly handsome leader of the Cause. Will he eventually live through battle after battle to see the defeat of the great all-seeing Eye (talk about privacy issues!) and take up his place as the next in the line of search-Kings? (A joke; that’s a joke!)
Just as in the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship actually believes that they can walk right into Gordor and topple the Power within before it spreads its shadow over all of the Search space! What will your role be in the battle for Total Market Share? Can this rag tag fellowship of Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and Men defeat the growing power of Gordor?
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