Google Universal Search - is Vertical Search Space Finished? by Alex Iskold, Read/Write Web (May 17)
Interesting position -- "But really, Universal Search is much more than that. It's a calculated shot aimed at a particular subset of the vertical search engines - the ones that claim to understand the underlying domain. Google already had search for each of these verticals, so all it has done is combined the results from all these searches into their main search results (where all the page views are)."
Suggests that vertical search will be hurt - but I doubt it. The vertical search engines have tools and context. A universal search will never have that - there will always be extra noise.
Posted by Gwen at May 21, 2007 10:14 PM