Is a Search Engine Going to be Your Constant Companion?

Take the trend towards the personalization of results by search engines and add mobile communication with GPS functionality into the mix and the likely answer to the question is "yes."

In Search Engines: Where We Were, Are Now, and Will Ever Be, Phil Bradley writes

[S]earch engines will become more pervasive than they already are, but paradoxically less visible, if you allow them to personalise increasingly your own search experience. Alerting services will become even more commonplace as search engines learn your interests and preferences and can inform you of new developments, news, new Web sites and so on without users having to do anything at all, since the engines can monitor what you do and where you go.

[JH]