The engineers remain busy at Google. 2005 brought us Google Video search, Google Maps, Google Sitemaps, Google Desktop, Web Accelerator, and the personalized Google home page. Who knows what 2006 could bring? Google Monkey, perhaps? A patent the Google engineers developed also provided potentially valuable insights into the inner-workings of the Google search algorithm. Its approval would prevent competitors like Yahoo! and Microsoft from improving their algorithms using the same criteria.
Scratch "not being able to afford one" off of the list of excuses for not having a website. In 2005, Yahoo! began offering all businesses free five page company websites. All of these free listings should improve the index and create a useful local search database. This, in turn, should help popularize local search and generate additional revenue for Yahoo! by upselling "free" customers to enhanced listings.
After much anticipation, Microsoft released its newly minted in-house engine. The engine works well, but not well enough to steal any market share from Google or Yahoo! by providing better search results. Instead, Microsoft is leveraging the massive proliferation of its software to attract people to the engine. Not to be outdone by Google and Yahoo!, Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on its own pay-per-click service. MSN currently uses paid listings from Overture, which forces it to split the ad revenue with Yahoo!. This agreement expires in 2006, so it will be interesting to see how the situation unfolds.
And let's not forget our old friend Jeeves. Jeeves went the way of the Pets.com sock puppet this year when AskJeeves was acquired by InterActiveCorp (IAC), which owns a variety of companies, including Expedia, Hotels.com, Match.com, and Ticketmaster. Still, many questions loom regarding the future of AskJeeves, particularly whether or not being acquired will change the company's offerings or the way it operates. It will also be interesting to see what synergies are developed between AskJeeves and IAC's online portfolio of companies.
2005 was definitely a busy year for the engines as they played point and counter-point with new product releases and service offerings. The stakes keep rising as the popularity and proliferation of online search continues to expand. There is so much at stake for these companies that they can not afford to fall behind. Could you imagine an Internet without search? What breakthrough developments will these companies introduce in 2006? Only time will tell.