An Introduction to Search Engines and Web Navigation

Chapter 10. THE FUTURE OF WEB SEARCH AND NAVIGATION

"With great powers come great responsibility."

—Spider-Man's uncle

We have provided an extensive introduction to web search and navigation technologies, including coverage of these technologies in the context of the mobile web and the impact that social networks are having on the way in which we interact with the Web.

Many of the tools that we use today for interacting with the Web have only been deployed on such a massive scale since the mid-1990s, when the Web took off, and we can therefore expect many additional improvements as time goes by.

Although, currently, search engine technology is in a much more stable state than it was during the late 1990s, it cannot be considered a mature technology in the same sense as, say, relational database technology is. The same can be said for the navigation tools that are currently on offer. Much of the progress will be evolutionary, with many of the tools presented in the book being further developed and improved.

It is hard to predict where the revolution that mobile computing has already started will take us. With the ubiquity of mobile devices, a variety of opportunities present themselves. The commodity that the Web allows us to obtain or to share is information in its many forms, and being connected to the Web through a desktop, a laptop, a mobile phone, or any other internet-enabled device gives us the "potential power" that comes with being part of the global information society. This ...