Some observations about search:
- Ease of use. It's very important, but the fact that most users do simple searches of a few keywords is a barrier to more advanced techniques. e.g., maybe the engines could offer a lot more, but only if people are willing to make complex query specifications
- Relevancy. Hard to measure, changes all the time, not well-understood, highly person- and context-dependent.
- Anecdotes lead you astray. Often search engine designers will be motivated by anecdotes about things that don't work, forgetting what the great mass of people are trying to do.
- Quality. Response speed and scaling to web-size are (mostly) solved.

Amazon's "search inside the book"
- What Udi and some of the a9 team did before leaving Amazon for a9
- 120k books, 33M pages
- Books scanned (bindings just cut off) and OCRed
- Took six months to build

Personalization at a9
- Personal search history
- Search results mark what's new since last search, what you clicked before
- Diary

What If
- Ask "what if", ignoring some current problems, and then perhaps figure out how to get there
- What if we had an hour from every user? What would we tell them, what would we design for them?
- What if everyone became an author? All the way from 1 bit (I like it/I don't on a review) to a book. How would we publish and consume all that?
- What if everyone were trustworthy, cooperative, and working in the community interest? How would we harness everyone's contributions?
- What if all media were accessible from one place (though distributed storage)? Assume copyright/compensation solved. How search, organize, and access it all? What tools would we need?