Bill Gates on local advertising: Yellow Pages gone in 5 years

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house of cards

Taking this approach of laying voice technology of MS's existing search infrastructure is like building a house of cards on quick sand. Even if it were Yahoo, Google, etc. the store wouldn't be much prettier.

The problem is, we as users can't type "find me the nearest Starbucks" and have a search engine decipher it for us! Even with the proliferation of local services, you still need to provide a location. Why? IP detection isn't always correct. House of cards on quicksand!

Here's a more specific example, using your text from this article, go to Yahoo and type in "find me the nearest Starbucks":
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=find+me+the+nearest+Starbucks&ei=utf-8&fr=b2ie7

What is the first result? Go to Starbuck's locator. Start all over. Well gee whiiz-- nice search engine. MSN? Same thing.

So try this... go to yellowpages.com and type in the same search, with your ZIP... and voila! A list of Starbucks with numbers and addresses. Even on Yahoo Local, the results aren't this good. For major chains like Starbucks, yeah, they may be close, but for smaller ma-n-pa type joints, you can't touch the wealth of info in your Yellow Pages.

Existing search technology is based on automated computer aggregation of abstract data-- as such, the results will always have a level of helpfulness that has a starting point, and ending point. I believe the best engines have yet to come, and that doesn't include MS's plans as laid out in this article, in fact, I think the publishers of the yellow pages are in the best position to kick MS right in the a$$. How? Well, they only have all of the specific local listings already.

I have to admit that I am a bit biased here as I have been working on a technology for about 6 years to compete in this space, but until we release, I am bound not to talk. Bottom line-- Yahoo, Google and MS have all got some work to do, and I think guys like the cofounder of Wikipedia have the right idea, user collaboration is key.

Posted by: kckn4fun   Posted on: 05/15/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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