You've got some GALL: Google-assisted language learning.

Remember Excite? AltaVista? Even Yahoo--the one-time premiere search tool-ultimately suffered with the arrival of Google, and for a while even adopted the latter's search technology (Perrone, 2004). Google has grown so exponentially as to surpass popular estimations on the advancement of technology (Kurzweil, 2001; Moore, 1965), and the prevailing signs indicate continued development and acquisition. Co-founder Larry Page has been quoted as stating that "[t]he ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it and give you back the exact right thing instantly" (Wray, 2006). Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, has more explicitly envisaged Google's role in said engine's development, indicating that "[t]he goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'" (Daniel & Palmer, 2007). Such statements are suggestive of an ambition to rise from mere search engine to total internet engine. It could be argued, however, that such efforts to dominate will ultimately destroy the minimalist appeal which attracted its legions of fans in the first place.

There are indeed hints that Google may falter. Despite its continued dominance in the US and Europe (comScore, 2007a; 2007b), according to Hargittai (2004), "many people do not use it, do not know about it, or even if they use it they may not know how to do so well." China's Baidu, for instance, remains the nation's most popular search engine, despite Google's attempts to gain ground (La Monica, 2007). There are also signs that Google recognizes its own mortality. Concerned over the potential 'genericide' of its name, and its resultant loss of prestige--and even trademark--it has actively canvassed for an end to such genericized usage, and a return to its status as a proper adjective (a la Xerox) (Ahrens, 2006; Duffy, 2003; Sturgeon, 2006).

In the meantime, a horde of 'Google killers' is looming. And the latest of these search engines are born more finely-tuned than their forbears, so as to be more accurate and useful. Yahoo's Mindset, for example, allows users to quantify the degree to which their intentions are commercial or informational. Natural language processing (NLP) search engines such as Powerset take into account 'stop words' (e.g., prepositions, articles) which Google ignores by default, thereby being more likely to consider the difference between 'taking off' and 'taking in' a shirt. Along the same lines, Q & A search engines like Hakia allow users to ask questions directly indicative of their meaning. Some, including ChaCha, even provide live guides. Clustered or federated search engines such as Clusty and the more visually stimulating KartOO utilize semantic data-mining technologies. Social search engines (e.g., Swicki) take a 'wisdom of crowds' approach, learning from the search strategies of their community. Social bookmarking sites (e.g., del.icio.us) similarly utilize user-generated 'tags'. A modern version of keywords, tagging is a system of classification which employs an information retrieval method known as folksonomy, a portmanteau of folks and taxonomy, literally a classification system by and for the people. Personalized search engines (e.g., Rollyo) allow users to create their own search engines, using sites of their choice. Yet others (e.g., Collarity) combine features of clustered, social, and personalized search engines.

Search providers aspire to offer services that are not only more useful than their competitors, but also more convenient. Some, such as Snap, recognize that many of today's searchers demand immediate gratification and may have limited attention spans, and therefore provide instant previews of search results. Others (e.g., Riya) take the notion of visual literacy to the extreme, excluding text altogether by searching only images. Also in existence are a host of other search tools--so-called vertical search engines--that directly target a specific range of topics (e.g., WebMD for health information), media (e.g., EveryZing searches content within podcasts and web-based videos), and populations (e.g., cRANKy for people over 50). And the list goes on ...

For more information on this topic, just google it.

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