I am a big believer that innovation can’t be bought.  It’s the manifestation of imagination and imagination is the seed of creativity.  It is something that is brought forth from people when they are following their passion.  The Google guys had a passion for the storage and organisation of information. They weren’t trying to get rich, catch up to a competitor or please the guys upstairs. They were simply following their passion to enable us access to all the internets information as quickly as possible. That’s why they were innovators. They were using their imagination to create an information retrieval tool that would change the world. As we know they did a brilliant job of it.

I think Microsoft and their struggles with there Live Search system is a good example that innovation can’t be bought.  Microsoft have all the money in the world and have tried for years to close the gap (more like a canyon really) between themselves and Google in terms of search.  The problem is Microsoft just seem to lack the imagination of those that went before them.

That’s why I have always believed that if anyone ever came to challenge Google’s search supremcy it would not be from either Microsoft or Yahoo.  It would be from someone with the innovation to change the way search works.  Google did it with their famous algorithm and Adwords down the right hand side.  Maybe (and this is still a big maybe) ASK 3D might be the innovation the search industry (outside of Google) has lacked.  What Firefox did with the browser ASK 3D is beginning to do with search. 

While the simplicity of their search page is a little Googlesque, its the results page where the advancements can be seen.  This is where the 3D part of the search results comes in.  The search results page is split into 3 columns.  If you do a search for say Michael Jordan (click the link left and see for yourself) not only do you receive the search results to this query but to the left and the right of the search results ASK has added a column that features additional enhancements.  These additonal features are Narrow Search, Expand Search, Related Names to search, Image results, Wikipedia results, Video results and even the latest news results (similar to what Google offers at the top of there search results page).

You can all make up your own mind and time will tell how well these additional features fare but for my thinking ASK have defintely made a big step in the right direction.  There innovative search defintely has created a bit of a stir with rumours that Google themselves are testing a similar system.

While unlike Microsoft with IE6 Google has always been working on there search system sometimes what is needed for real prgression is fresh eyes and a little imagination.  As stated Firefox gave life to the web browser and hopefully ASK 3D will do it for search.  My only hope is that if Google do release a similar system that ASK still get the recognition and users it deserves.  This though is another matter entirely.

Thanks
Adam.