The other argument to consider is the imposition of introducing Semantic technologies – in the same way any new technology is introduced. The RWW article from my previous comment quotes Tim Berners-Lee well – where SearchMonkey and some engines look for semantic data in web pages, Hakia for example, doesn’t rely on Web authors having to have put that data there in the first place – it analyses natural language.

It’s still keenly debated whether the ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ approach to the Semantic Web is best – whether to code semantics at the data level or develop systems to mine/extract semantics from already existing data – or whether it’s even such a strict dichotomy. Whichever; I think Google are definitely at one end and said search engines like Hakia, True Knowledge and Powerset are at the other.

I know Google previously used Semantic technology to power their AdSense and AdWords services, but I think the processing was far too slow to function for their main search platform at the time. I think more than anything it would be a ridiculously huge overhaul to attempt to reconstruct Google for semantic search, same as Yahoo! – that’s why they launched SearchMonkey separately.

Google’s search algorithm grew from the complete opposite of semantic understanding – to match keywords and patterns, honed to almost ‘guess’ what the user intends – it’s affected the fundamental way we enter search terms so it seems strange to ask literal questions to engines like True Knowledge or Hakia. But it’s those kind of new platforms that really rival Google with natural language processing at least – though I’ve no doubt there’s some semantic technology under the hood at Google – tagging pages I’m sure, dealing with ambiguity and synonyms, etc – even if the index isn’t wholly semantic.

Even before these search engines achieve the White Rabbit complete and universal natural language understanding, they’re challenging the core concepts of search by performing sentence analysis over keyword analysis at the very least – Google are surely going to have to respond some way.