"Search is the core of our business and frankly speaking... search doesn't get the attention it deserves because we're victims of our own success," said Schrage.
So too are Ask.com, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Each of the other major search companies offers innovations that compare favorably to Google in certain areas. Ask, for example, has long had arguably superior contextual navigation features.
"It's very much in line with what we've been doing for the past three years," said Eckart Walther, VP of products for Yahoo Search, about Google's announcement. The trend, he said, was toward a single query box rather than various vertical, or topical, search engines.
Yahoo Search currently includes playable video content on the search results page when appropriate. For instance, a search on Yahoo for Blades of Glory returns text links and a video player to see the film's trailer. Yahoo's inclusion of video content, however, appears to apply only to specific searches, in contrast to Google's complete integration of its indices.
Walther also said that Google's upcoming search translation capability -- which Google's Udi Manber described as a way for searchers to get relevant results in foreign languages translated and returned -- "sounds suspiciously similar to something we launched two years ago."
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
