Wha?

Seriously, I just don’t believe the statement (or the interpretation of the statement) by Yahoo CFO Susan Decker that Yahoo is going to give up on winning search. In my opinion, the search battle is far from over. As I wrote before, as good as Google is, search can be so much better! And Yahoo has the money, the resources, and the brand to be able to find the next great innovation in Search. Any company that does that can beat Google.  Remember, Google didn’t come to own search because of their great name; they took over because they had better results.  And results can still improve.

Frankly, it’s not going to take a lot of people to come up with that innovation. A handful of really smart people (whom they probably have) and a bunch of bad-ass servers and you can win at Search.

I’m with Steve Rubel: if Yahoo really gives up on search, they really are in danger of losing ground on other things. It’s so weird, that it makes me think that this is really just a trick to lull the competition to sleep.  Just so weird…

As good as Google is, search is not over. We all know this. I don’t know of anyone who really uses the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button because it’s extremely rare that all the information you’re looking for is the first thing that pops up.

The leap that pushed Google past Yahoo, AltaVista, etc. was PageRank which injected a little bit of human filtering on the search results (by finding a proxy for determining “importance” of a website). And the next great leap forward in search will also be a way to incorporate more human intelligence into the search results.

Imagine a search company that really knows you, knows the context of the searches that you’re making, knows your interests, knows not only what the general population thinks is crap but what you think is crap. I’m sure people Google, MS, Yahoo, and others are working on that. But for that system to work, users are going to have to give up some privacy and “trust” that the corporations they’re using are going to use that information to serve them better results and better ads.

The hubbub about whether or not Google tracks your searches (Leslie Walker at the Washington Post) was thrust into the blistering light by the government’s request for search data. And this hubbub only shows that a truly intelligent search company is going to have a really hard time picking up steam in this privacy-obsessed tech culture.

The company best positioned to collect that data (Microsoft, because they own the OS and the browser) wouldn’t be allowed to touch that data with the negative perception of them in the vocal parts of the tech community.  Even tech-darlings Google would have a hard time rolling out better search based on user-tracked behavior.

In limited numbers, people might give up their privacy for the convenience of better search. But will our tech culture back off on its demand for privacy enough to allow a true wide-spread revolution in search? 

Update: Interesting article about this very topic.

Scott Karp has some interesting thoughts on the faults with RSS, and in general, I agree with him. Definitely, anyone who thinks that the term “RSS” is going to sweep the nation is smoking something that I really need to get my hands on.

As much as we in the industry want to think otherwise, even more user-friendly terms like “blog” take time to reach into the hearts and minds of those people between the coasts.

Anyway, he’s got the right idea: lose the silly acronym (focus on the word “blog”) and integrate with email. Email is a, no “the”, killer app for the internet.

Now, that’s a cool idea.

The important thing about BillMonk‘s execution of this idea is that they kept it simple. And they definitely have to keep it simple because I can’t imagine using anything complicated to keep track of a $5 burrito with extra sour cream.

As Michael Arrington wrote, the SMS thing is definitely cool, and I think important in keeping the site usable.

Now, they just have to be integrated with (or bought by) PayPal, and I’ll use it!

So I have to disagree with Michael Arrington when he says that Ning was “the perfect service at the perfect time“.

Social networking sites are powerful beasts, and clearly, they have the ability to get a lot of people connected, excited, and delirious enough to throw money at them.

But the ability to create your own social networking site? I just don’t think that is something that a lot of people can successfully do. They’ll dabble in it, they’ll play with it, yes, they may even create one for Nebraskan shark wrestlers, but it won’t be successful.

The problem is that the power of the social network is the number of people in the network. Social networks fail not because of the lack of some key feature but because they never get a critical mass of users so it can grow on its own. Despite the undeniable power of viral growth, viral growth actually rarely just works. Friendster, MySpace, etc. weren’t accidents. It needs the care and feeding of someone with a mind (and time and $) for PR, business development, and marketing.

Most people making mashups don’t have that. And Ning doesn’t help you.

Nissan lets you use your car as an Xbox controller. Crazy.

Way too cool and way too useless. I really should create a “Still haven’t cured cancer” category.