By Guest Author Digvijay Lamba

I hear it all the time:  the mistaken assumption that one search engine is all anyone needs to find information online.  Only one way to find everything on the Web?  Think again.

Today’s search landscape is far more fragmented than most people realize.   Traditional search engines are only part of the story:   the definition of a search engine has now expanded to include any website with a search box. Think of the way you shop for a book on Amazon, find an Italian restaurant in San Francisco on Yahoo Local, reconnect with your long lost high school pals on Facebook, or research the drug your doctor prescribed on RightHealth.   Search engines are everywhere.

Because these different search engines have few connections to each other, users never see the vast majority of content that would be valuable to them for each query.  No search engine—not even the big three—can surface every bit of useful content and present it in an easy-to-digest way. That’s the bad news.  The good news is that search is going to have its revolution soon, which will completely change how we find information.

How will that revolution happen? The potential for innovation will cause a community to evolve around the search space, and search will become a platform.

The possibilities for innovation in search are huge.  For example, someone will find a better way to let users specify their intent.  Requested information will be returned in a more visual, intuitive layout. Results will be personalized better based on the user’s intent and the subject of the search. User interfaces will be tailored to the specific intent (Looking for videos?) or the more specific subject (Just want Health results?). Domain-specific experts will achieve a deeper understanding of both the content and the query, and will form richer connections between the two.

As the potential for innovation in Search grows, the space will attract a much larger pool of entrepreneurs than any one company can ever contain.  Whenever a technology matures, communities naturally form around it.  Take personal computers, for example.   While ATI and NVidia fight over the Graphics capability, Intel and AMD compete over the chip. Dozens of companies provide monitors, keyboards, memory, motherboards and every other aspect of the PC. And hundreds if not thousands of companies can provide the different software applications.

Every widely-used technology has hundreds of companies involved in competing for the different parts that make up the whole, and the search space will be no different. Expect a flurry of increased funding for specific solutions, increased competition, and increased specialization.  And the company that harnesses this momentum and gets companies engaged together in a search platform will find itself in the most enviable position.

What do we mean by a search platform? It will be an internet website that allows hundreds of search companies to provide specialized solutions to various search problems in a connected and integrated manner. For example, if you search for “Chocolate” the platform may connect you to a recipes search engine, a health search engine, and a shopping search engine allowing each to present specialized results with a richer interface than what today’s web search allows. It will allow each engine to innovate in its area of expertise and connect the three together in a meaningful way so the end user sees much richer results.

The platform creator will have the responsibility to match different search solutions to the user’s differing needs.  What’s the best approach to achieve this?  One option is to let the users choose from the various search providers and “install” the applications that best suit them.  Another approach is to build a platform that understands the user and the different applications deeply, and can connect the user automatically to just the right application, at just the right time.  My company, Kosmix, has built an early version of such a platform, which delivers the best of the Web by bringing together hundreds of content providers, aggregators, and niche search engines. We’re off to a good start, and this is just beginning.

For search to be viable as a platform in the long-term, it must offer value to everyone involved: the platform creator, the application providers, and the users. The platform creator and application providers need to make money, obviously, while at the same time offering consumers high-quality, easily accessible content for free.  This can be achieved in one of three ways:  The Amazon Model, the eBay Model, or the Facebook model.

In the Amazon model, the platform creator owns the underlying economics and is responsible for sharing the benefits with solution providers.  Think of the way Amazon.com receives payments for anything a customer buys on the site and then, in turn, pays the sellers on the Amazon marketplace.

In the eBay model, solution providers own the revenue and share a part of it with the platform creator. eBay does this by charging its sellers a percentage fee for all items sold on the marketplace.

In the Facebook model, the platform creator and the solutions providers are independently responsible for their own benefits. Facebook gets an indirect benefit by making the experience on their site richer for their users, while allowing applications to display ads or generate traffic. In this case, the platform must offer opportunities for the owner to monetize his application in various ways. For example they may share traffic, share the advertising space between the two, etc.

All three of these models have merit, and it remains to be seen which direction a search platform will take. One thing remains clear: as search evolves it will become harder and harder for one company to do it all. A platform that connects hundreds of search engines together can become a powerful source of innovation allowing it to build a deeper and richer experience for its users. The innovation in search has only just started. We need millions of connected search engines.