Article printed from SEO-News: http://www.seo-news.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.seo-news.com/archives.html

An Interview With Microsoft's Robert Scoble
by Andy Beal ©Copyright 2004

In my recent article "The Future of Search Engine Technology", 
(http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2004/feb/12.html) I looked 
at a lot of developments that might happen in the future, that 
would improve search technology. I strongly believe that we are 
witnessing the infancy of search engine technology, but I wanted 
to hear what others had to say. Today, we start a series of 
interviews with prominent experts, insiders and search engine 
developers to hear what their thoughts are for the future.

If you've been online for any length of time and work in any 
industry connected with the Internet, you would have heard of, 
Robert Scoble. The Microsoft employee maintains a daily blog 
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/) (when he's not working to 
get the word out about Microsoft's new "Longhorn" operating 
system) where he gives his thoughts on all things Microsoft, 
while also casting a critical eye on the competition. Scoble 
does a great job of keeping a distinct line between what's 
"official" and what's simply his opinion.

I was fortunate enough to catch him taking a sabbatical from 
his blog and asked him his thoughts on the future of search 
engine technology. Scoble did ask me to note that the following 
represents his personal opinions, not Microsoft-vetted opinions.

[Andy Beal] Robert, tell me about the search engine technology 
being developed that you are most excited about?

[Robert Scoble] That depends on whether you're talking about 
Internet searching, or searching on your local hard drive. If 
we're talking about your local hard drive, searching for files 
on your local hard drive is still awful and getting worse.

[AB] Why do you say that? 

[RB] Because hard drives keep getting bigger (a 60GB drive at 
Fry's Electronics is $60 now -- in three years we predict it'll 
be $20 and you'll see 500GB drives for less than $100). It's 
easier to create files now than it is to find them.

Today search tools like X1 are most interesting because they 
index your hard drive and make it easy to search for email and 
files on your local drives. Microsoft Research has been working 
on a tool called "Stuff I've Seen" too, which is also quite 
interesting (both let you search email as well as files on your 
hard drive). But, these tools don't go far enough. First, they 
are bolted on top of the operating system. So, while they are 
indexing, your system often sees slowdowns. They can't design 
those to work properly with the operating system and with other 
applications that might need processor time.

Plus, to really make search work well search engines need 
metadata and metadata that's added by the system keeping track 
of your usage of files, as well as letting application developers 
add metadata into the system itself. In a lot of ways, weblogs 
are adding metadata to websites. When a weblog like mine 
(http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/) links to a web site, we 
usually add some more details about that site. We might say it's 
a "cool site" for instance. Well, Google puts those words into 
its engine. That's metadata. (Technically metadata is "data 
about data"). Now if you search for "cool site" you'll be more 
likely to find the site I just linked to. So, you can see how 
Google's engine is helped by metadata. But, we haven't been able 
to apply those lessons to the thousands of files on your hard 
drive. That will change.
 
[AB] Can you explain the problems faced with searching hard 
drives and what Microsoft is working on to help?

[RB] What if we did the same thing on your hard drive [as 
Google]? For instance, look at pictures. When I take pictures 
off of my Nikon, they have some metadata (for instance, inside 
the file is the date it was taken, along with the exposure 
information) but that metadata isn't useful for most human 
searches. For instance, how about if I wanted to search for "my 
wedding photos?" Neither X1, nor Windows XP's built in search 
would find your wedding photos. Why? Because they have useless 
names like DSC0001.jpg and there's no metadata that says they 
are wedding photos.

Let's go forward a couple of years to the next version of 
Windows, code-named Longhorn. In Longhorn we're building a new 
file storage system, code-named WinFS. With WinFS searching and 
metadata will be part of the operating system. For instance, you 
could just start typing in an address bar "W" and "E" and "D" 
and "D" and anything that started with WEDD would come up to the 
top. For instance, your wedding documents, spreadsheets, and 
photos.

But, WinFS goes further than X1 and other file search tools do 
today. It lets you (and developers of apps you'll use) add 
metadata to your files. So, even if you don't change the name of 
your files, you might click on one of the faces in a picture 
application and get prompted to type a name and occasion. So, 
you would click on your cousin Joe's face, type in "Joe Smith" 
and "Wedding."

Now whenever you search for wedding stuff, that photo will come 
up. And that's just the start. If you imported a group of photos 
into a wedding album, you'd be adding metadata for the search 
engine to use. In other words, you'll see a much nicer system 
for searching your local hard drive.

[AB] It looks like Microsoft has things mapped out for offline 
searches, but can they compete with Internet search engines?

[RS] Now, if we're talking about the Internet, then Google has 
done an awesome job so far. I use Google dozens of times a day. 
Will MSN [search] be able to deliver more relevant results than 
Google? I don't know. Certainly that's not the case today. Will 
that change tomorrow? I'm waiting to see what the brains at MSN 
do.

One thing I do see is that in Longhorn, search will be nicer for 
customers. Google is working on making its toolbar the best 
possible experience. We're working on a whole raft of things too. 
I'm very excited about the future of search, no matter which way 
things go.

[AB] Let's look beyond the next couple of years. What new 
developments in search do you see happening in the next 3-5 
years?

[RS] For Internet searches, I see social behavior analysis tools 
like Technorati (http://www.technorati.com) becoming far more 
important. Why? Because people want different ways to see 
potentially relevant results. Google took us a long way toward 
that future as their Google's results are strongly influenced by 
how many inbound links a site has. But, now, let's go further, 
even further than Technorati has gone. Let's identify who really 
is keeping the market up to date on a certain field and give 
him/her more weight.

I also see that search engines that search just specific types 
of content (like Feedster - http://www.feedster.com/) are going 
to be more important (Feedster only searches RSS and Atom 
syndication feeds).

Oh, and users are going to demand new ways of exporting searches. 
Google showed us that with News Alerts. Enter in a search term, 
like "Microsoft" and get emailed anytime a news source mentions 
Microsoft. Feedster goes further than that. There you can build 
an RSS feed from a search term. I have several of those coming 
into my RSS News Aggregator and find they are invaluable for 
watching what the weblogs are saying about your product, company, 
or market. For instance, one of my terms I built a feed for is 
"WinFS" -- I'll be watching to see how many people link to this 
article and if any of you have something interesting to say I'll 
even link back.

[AB] Let's look at your "wish list". Assuming there were no 
restrictions in technology, what new feature would you like to 
see introduced to search engines?

[RS] I want to see far better tools for searching photos -- and 
connecting relationships between all types of files and photos. 
For instance, why can't I just drag a name from my contact list 
to associate that name with a face in a photo? Wouldn't that 
help searching later on? In just 18 months I've taken 7400 
photos. But I can't search any of them very well today without 
doing a lot of renaming and other work.

[AB] What impact do you see social networking having on the 
future of search engine technology?

[RS] We're already seeing an impact over on Feedster and 
Technorati. It's hard to tell what'll come in the future, but 
what would happen if everyone in the world had a weblog and was 
a member of Google's Orkut (http://www.orkut.com/)? Would that 
change how I'd search? Well, for one, it'd make me even more 
likely to search for people on services that linked together 
social spaces and weblogs. Heck, I can't remember my brother's 
email address, but Google finds his weblog (and I can send him 
an email there).

One other thing I'll be watching is how Longhorn's WinFS gets 
used by application developers to build new kinds of social 
systems. Today if you look at contacts, for instance, they are 
locked up in Outlook, or another personal information management 
program like ECCO. But, contacts in Outlook can't be used by 
other applications (particularly now because virus writers used 
the APIs in Outlook to send fake emails to all contacts in 
Outlook, so Microsoft turned those features off).

[AB] WinFS changes that. How?

[RS] By putting a "contacts" file type into the OS itself, 
rather than forcing applications developers to come up with 
their own contacts methodology. 

What if ALL applications, not just Outlook, could use that new 
file type? What if we could associate that file type to social 
software services like Friendster, Tribe, Yahoo's personals, or 
Google's Orkut? Would that radically change how you would keep 
track of your contacts? Would that make contacts radically more 
useful? I think it would.

Already we're seeing systems like Plaxo (https://www.plaxo.com/) 
keep track of contacts, but Plaxo is still unaware that I've 
entered my data into Google's Orkut and Friendster. Why couldn't 
I make a system that'd associate the data in all my social 
software systems? Including Outlook? 

[AB] Do you foresee any problems with the WinFS approach?

[RS] Developers distrust Microsoft's intentions here. They 
also don't want to open up their own applications to their 
competitors. If you were a developer at AOL, for instance, do 
you see opening up your contact system with, say, Yahoo or 
Google or Microsoft? That's scary stuff for all of us.

But, if the industry works together on common WinFS schemas (not 
just for contacts either, but other types of data too), we'll 
come away with some really great new capabilities. It really 
will take getting developers excited about WinFS's promise and 
getting them to lose their fears about opening up their data 
types.
 
[AB] Do you foresee a time when commercial search results 
(product/services) will be separated from informational search 
results (white papers/educational sites)? And do you think all 
commercial listings will eventually be paid only?

[RS]I don't see the system changing from the Google-style results 
today. Searchers just want to see relevant results. Paid-only 
searches won't bring the most relevant results.

[AB] What makes you say that?

[RS] Because I often find the best information on weblogs. 
Webloggers are never going to be able to afford to pay to be 
listed on search engines.

Commercial-only listings might be seen on cell phones or PDAs, 
though. If I were doing a cell phone service for restaurants in 
Seattle, for instance, I might be more likely to list just member 
sites. But, thinking about it, I still don't see such a system 
becoming popular enough without listing every restaurant in some 
way.

[AB] Speaking of cell phones. How do you see search engine 
technology impacting our use of PDAs and Cell phones?

[RS] Not sure if search engine technology will impact it, but 
the mixture of speech recognition with search engines might
change it a lot. When I'm using my cell phone I don't want to 
look at sites that have a lot to read (I'll save those for later 
when I'm in front of a computer or my Tablet PC) but, instead, I 
want to find the closest Starbucks. Look up movie listings. Find 
a nice place to have a steak dinner. Now that cell phones are 
reporting e911 data (that means that the cell phone system knows 
approximately where you're located, so it can give you just one 
or two Starbucks, rather than all of the ones in Seattle).

[AB]  If search engine users gave up a little of their privacy 
and allowed their search habits to be monitored, would this allow 
the search engines to provide better, customized results?

[RS] Yes. I already give Google the ability to watch my search 
terms (I use the Google Toolbar). But, it always must be a 
choice. People really hate it when you don't have strict privacy 
policies that are easy to understand and they hate it if you 
don't give them a choice to not report anything.

[AB] Robert, you've certainly opened our eyes to the future of 
search engine technology, is there anything else you would like 
to add?

[RS] To echo what I said above, I hope the industry sees the 
opportunities that Longhorn's WinFS opens up. We can either work 
together and share data with each other, or we can be afraid and 
keep data to ourselves. It'll be an interesting time to watch in 
the next three years.

Many thanks to Robert Scoble, Microsoft employee and blog 
extraordinaire. Please be sure to visit SearchEngineLowdown.com 
(http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/) as we continue to highlight 
the thoughts and views on the future of search engine technology.

================================================================
Andy Beal is Vice President of Search Marketing for WebSourced, 
Inc and KeywordRanking.com (http://www.keywordranking.com/), 
global leaders in professional search engine marketing. Highly 
respected as a source of search engine marketing advice, Andy 
has had articles published around the world and is a repeat 
speaker at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Strategies conferences. 
Clients include Real.com, Alaska Air, Peopleclick, Monica 
Lewinsky and NBC. You can reach Andy at andy@keywordranking.com 
and view his daily SEO blog at www.searchenginelowdown.com. 
================================================================

Copyright © 2004 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SEO-News is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.