We will probably see other acquisitions because all the big players are afraid to miss the "next big search thing" (Microsoft deal heralds further consolidation). In most cases, though, they will be buying technology based on the same principle - keyword recognition.

You can add arcane semantic or linguistic algorithms and invest in taxonomies, but you will still have to give a system an exact definition.

But what if the keyword is misspelled? Will the engine work in this case? What if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, but just have a vague notion?

There are other solutions that deal with this problem by imitating the work of the human brain - we do not look for keywords, we look for patterns.

This sort of system means no need for dictionaries that list most common misspellings, no need for inverted indexes, Boolean operators, and taxonomies. Just type in a stream of misspelled consciousness, and the system will find the match.

Such queries will make most search engines catatonic with confusion.

Yegor Kuznetsov