Search pioneer Louis Monier is trading eBay, where he launched a new e-commerce search engine, for Google but he told John Battelle folks should hold off on the speculation about what he’ll be doing there for a while. Turns out the AltaVista founder (and one of the people behind BabelFish, a personal favorite) has no remit to start, just the freedom to wander through the company and see what captures his attention.
The interview is a quick, interesting read. A couple of excerpts:
– “… I have been working on search for e-commerce for several years now, so a change would be welcome. The Froogle rumors are a bit hasty given that I have not made up my mind, and I won’t for a few weeks. Someone must have connected the dots in the obvious manner, but I am tempted by more exotic stuff. We’ll see.”
– “Just to be clear, I think that Google has plenty of search experts, so I may actually never touch search. But since I have the mike in hand, what I find the most interesting problem in search is to think of it as a dialog rather than a one-shot thing: enter query, get ten links back. The search engine needs to do its part to keep the dialog going.”
Here’s a question I want answered: will we even know what’s he’s working on at Google once he decides or will he end up working in stealth mode? Either way, the results could be fascinating.
(First Louis Monier-Google sighting via Om Malik.)
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