‘Twas the week before Christmas, no time left to waste
I’d left all my shopping to last minute haste
Through the store fronts I dashed with no time to spare
In hopes the gifts on my list still would be there.

How many relatives, co-workers, friends?
How many presents to buy, wrap and send?
Overwhelmed by my tally I began my plight
“How on earth does Santa do it?” I wondered this night.

The store shelves near bare, the pickings were slim
Had I waited too long? Was the outlook now grim?
Back to my home, I flew with resolve
                          Booted up my computer to search, find, and solve.

On Google! On Yahoo! MSN, Bing and Ask!
Find “Last Minute Christmas Deals”, now this is your task!
To the top of the page, to the top of the list
What deals would I find too good to resist?

Digital camera for dad, video games for bro
Coffee maker for mom, a new phone for the beau.
Holiday gift baskets, sent pre-arranged
Desk toys for the Secret Santa Exchange.

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I know from the title alone that people are scratching their heads and wondering how the heck I could apply the title of “David” to a behemoth of a company like Microsoft.  I can because Microsoft last week announced a civil suit that they have filed against three individuals that they accuse of participating in click fraud on the MSN ad platform.  Microsoft is the “David” because Click Fraud (now turned into an entity by this post) is huge in the search industry, and though we deal with it, sweep it under the rug, pretend it is not there, etc. it is the “Goliath”.  The civil suit that Microsoft filed is less than one million dollars (as you read, know that I am touching my pinky finger to the corner of my mouth and looking evil), but will reap much, much more.  The PR alone, when we are all evangelizing about Bing, is enough to keep the momentum going for Microsoft.

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This post was written by Chris Copeland and published in MediaPost’s Search Insider, Friday, December 19, 2008.

Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” More recently, rapper Eminem asked if you had one shot, one moment to seize everything you wanted, would you capture it or let it slip away?

A recent meeting I had with Yahoo brought both of these quotes to mind. A Yahoo product rep told our group that the average search session lasts 15 minutes. That includes the back and forth between clicks and all queries in a given session. A week later, I polled a room of savvy client-side marketers on this issue, and the responses I got ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. It wasn’t until guesses were exhausted that someone finally came onto the exceedingly high time expenditure.

This led me to ask the question: If you were willing to spend 15 minutes searching for something, is the current model of back and forth and refinement the best bet for the future? My personal sense is no, but then, the question becomes: What is?

Let’s begin by exploring what search today does well — immediacy — and what it does reasonably well: organization based on relevancy. Clearly that is an oversimplification, but these are at or near the top of the list. Of all that the search experience provides, encyclopedic knowledge and its organization by any set of guidelines is a massive shift in how the general public finds and is exposed to information. The fact someone can go from zero to being conversant on any topic with the help of Google should not be understated in the value equation. People expect Google to find them the best deals, the most insightful data, and generally create order in their otherwise chaotic world of searching for answers.

But it’s the setting of order — and on whose terms — that may cause a seismic shift in what types of platforms will deliver the intersection of content and intent. Today, the single largest arbiter of relevance is Google, period. This is a company that had moved forward with open as its mantra in social and mobile, and remains completely closed in another area: its search engine. Given this is the secret sauce that makes Google what it is, this is understandable. But it presents challenges for a society becoming more intelligent about the Internet and the social nature of the Web. Last month I discussed GoogleWiki, which begins to alter, in a very small way, the open nature of Google rankings, but this is a far cry from where a personalized search results page could get to very quickly.

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A dreary, rain filled Sunday afternoon practically begs you to take the opportunity to spend a lazy few hours online shopping and surfin’ the net from the safety of your sofa. A fan of Almanac, I commenced with “on this day,” then “word of the day,” followed by “birthday of the day.” I grew bored quickly and even considered getting up to load the dishwasher, when I decided to surf the future!

I started with Google and MSN and the keyword phrase “on this day 2030.” The results were natural on both engines displaying content from “Earth day 2030” and an interesting article from “Forum for the Future” with regards to climate change:

“It’s New Year’s Day, 2030. Hungover, you stumble across to the fridge and yank it open. You grab the purple nutrition bar you’ve been saving, slump down on the sofa and call up the movie channel. Just a couple of minutes viewing proves it’s another propaganda film, featuring the valiant efforts of the ‘global volunteers’ in Antarctica who are helping to run the refugee settlements. But viewing is interrupted quickly by your Monitor, which announces that you left the fridge door open and are wasting too much energy. The broadcast is closed down and you’re docked several credits for the climate violation.”

Yahoo displayed a listing from Zappos shoes on the Hip 2030 toddler/youth lace up boots! That was confusing – would I even know a toddler to purchase lace-up boots in the year 2030?

Back to Google to search images, maps, news and shopping “on this day 2030.”   A “green” theme was quickly emerging – price of oil and how to find the Worldwatch Institute on Google Maps.

Google Shopping provided the opportunity for consumerism with a book named: 2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids.

“Global events and new technology change how we live from moment to moment. So, what will our world be like in twenty years? Come take a look as futurists Amy Zuckerman and James Daly examine what a kid’s daily life might be like in the year 2030. Inspired and informed by trends and scientific and technological research, “2030″ is not only a peek at some cool future gadgets (talking dog collars, cars that drive themselves), but also a thoughtful examination of how our lives might be impacted as we adjust to environmental change.”

Why are there not more advertisers paying for future marketing opportunities? If content is being written and researched with regards to 22 years from now, surely I am not the only surfer searching on the future? I might just add that book to my shopping cart today and get prepared for tomorrow…

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With the unknown future of Yahoo’s stability, the recent grumblings over Google’s advantageous use of their power, and the inefficient technology of Ask, has the search world finally entered the Era of MSN?  This is quite the possibility when you give it some thought.

We know this has been a volatile year for the top four search engines.  Google, while still mighty, has seen some backlash for some of their recent enhancement choices.  While we love Ask and want them to succeed, it seems that their current company model doesn’t support the technological changes they need to make in order to gain a nice chunk of market share.  The stability and sureness of Yahoo as a whole is, simply put, not there.  All the while MSN’s been plugging away to make their user and advertiser experience better.

If you’ve been in the search space for the last 3 ½ years, you can probably remember the entrance of MSN into the ranks.  Everyone was excited, but it didn’t take long for that excitement to change to irritation.  Many of us felt adCenter was launched before Microsoft was ready to support it and back it up with the technology it needed to be successful.  For example:

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