thank you for the comment. You have presented an interesting description of link representations. As I said, until now there is actually no one single “correct” answer on how Web search may evolve. So everybody can suggest his own beliefs, just as you did. And I believe that such an effort is valuable because it helps us think of the problem in various directions. Eventually, it helps the progress of Web search in general.

In specific to your thought, I think you still focused too much on the “format” of link presentations. Although presentation formats matter, I believe, however, it is the power of productivity that matters more on the aspect of Web search evolution. When we discuss the issue of productivity with respect to a particular type of resources, we are discussing how easily they can be manufactured to produce higher quality products. For example, the quality of refined steel is higher than the quality of iron ore because it is much easier to produce higher quality products (such as cars) by using refined steel than directly using iron ore. This is the quality evolution I mention with respect to the evolution of the Web as well as the evolution of Web search.

Yihong

Link 1.0: Static page, e.g. http://www.barackobama.com
Link 2.0: Dynamic page, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=Barack+Obama
Link 3.0: Type-sensitive link. The term is recognized as a “PersonName”, and the link redirects to a People Search engine, e.g. http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&keywords=Barack+Obama
Link 4.0: Personalized link, which varies by user. Based on your preferences, the link is dynamically constructed to redirect to a People Search engine of your choice, e.g. http://www.spock.com/q/barack-obama

To make my viewpoint be clearer, I want to add one more comment.

There are two basic types of quality you need to consider when you run hakia.

1) there is a quality about how well the search results produced by hakia match the specified user requests.

2) there is a quality about how hakia has produced the link resources based on the search results so that the produced hakia links become more feasible to be further manufactured.

It is the second but not the first quality that measures the stages of Web search evolution. You need to consider not only how well hakia search is for end users but also how well hakia search is about producing manufactureable link resources. Think of hakia to be a factory in addition to a service provider. It may help you design better strategy for the future of hakia.

Yihong

Thank you for the comment. Surely hakia is doing excellent work on Web search. In person I agree that hakia is among the few best alt search engines that may challenge Google.

However, when we talk about the evolution of Web search, it is somehow different from what you argued. As I said in the article, companies can produce good search results at any evolutionary level, no matter they are in Search 1.0 or Search 4.0. The criterion to measure stages of evolution is not about how well the search results are but about in which quality of productivity the search results are produced. The “high quality” (on behalf of Web evolution) link resources can be easily further manufactured and thus are more productive than the “low quality” link resources. This is the key of my viewpoint of Web search evolution.

Certainly, however, there are several other opinions of Web search evolution that Charles has summarized earlier. My viewpoint is only one of them. Since none have been actually proved by history, we have to wait to see which one indeed explains the reality of Web evolution.

Yihong