Would you be concerned for my sanity if I proposed that search really isn't the future for the Internet power players? How ridiculous does this sound? Search functionality is crucial to Yahoo!, Google, MSN, etc., right? But my opinion is, "It is not, at least in its current state."

What we have today is a raw underutilized version of search compared to what is just around the corner. Search is about to mature much like the internal combustion engine . Once produced as an awe-inspiringly loud two-stroke mechanism useful for a one-seater four-wheeled contraption, the internal combustion engine has been reinvented in a multitude of ways to serve a multitude of services. Search as we know it today, is that loud two-stroke engine. But soon it will be the foundation for much more efficient and productive services as it becomes reinvented in a multitude of ways.

As this progresses, search engines (ironic name, eh?), will become invisible to the user as the services they are built on garner the attention. Yahoo! is so much further down the road in this regard than any other company on the Internet. Not only through its recent acquisitions but also through its many innovations both implemented and soon to be.

Agreed, the company who is able to sell their search solution into the most services will have a significant place in the web world, albeit a behind the scenes one (which many would prefer anyway). But the companies with the most effective services will be better positioned to do far more. And I guess that's my point here. Companies will soon need to decide if they're going to be engine- or services-centric.

We may look back on keyword searches that resulted in a list of 448,964 web pages and wonder how we got through the day.