In an interesting essay on ‘How Microsoft can beat Google at Search’, Robin Good details his wishlist of what the future of search engines should look like.  I reproduce, here, some excerpts that are in sync with what I would want too :

Visual

I want to see visual clusters of results that represent the different possible answer areas that have come up. I want to be able to easily dive into and resurface from those clusters.

Customizable

Everyone has different values, expectations, preferences, interests and goals. Can I rank results my way? Or filter out what I consider ‘junk’?

Shareable

If my choices, preferences, trusted sources, filtering methods and results cannot be shared with others, we are missing the whole train passing in front of us. This is not old media.

Recordable

I want to be able to record and access every single site I have visited. I want to be able to search in a subsystem of the Web that includes only the sites I have seen. Memory is a treasure of information.

As Robin says in his concluding argument, we need to move from ‘Searching’ to ‘Finding’.  Let’s hope some one out there is listening…