Just the sentence "Google will soon be irrelevant" is sure to set off a firestorm of conversation and arguments. The company's death grip on the information most of us rely on daily to function in the internet age is well-known, and Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) brand has managed to infiltrate so many areas so quickly it's mind-boggling. But, the company's inability to adapt quickly to the soaring popularity of social search (think Facebook and Mahalo, a new 'human-powered' search engine) may be its popularity downfall, according to well-known blogger Robert Scoble.

Will Google's automatically-generated search results and website indexing practices be overtaken by the ability of real people to produce similar chunks of information that are more personally relevant? It's hard to imagine that happening any time soon due to Google's enormous popularity and usage from billions of web surfers every year. Just like any commodity, customers eventually prefer more customized and personalized result, and web usage will be no different. But make no mistake -- Google is working feverishly to ensure its bread-n-butter search engine becomes as personally attached to each Google customer as possible. Is that enough?

Scoble does put forth an interesting question: what is the future of search? Will it be using a mobile phone or PC to find things we're looking for in the most local and personal way possible by means of highly relevant search results? That would be the easy answer based on the natural evolution of the way many of us use internet search today. That doesn't make it guaranteed, though -- and whoever discovers the "next version of search" could indeed threaten Google. Then again, Google's brand will be incredibly hard to dethrone, just like any entrenched household name.

While Google Inc.(NASDAQ:GOOG) is the king of search, there are many startup companies trying to get a piece of the action.

One is StumbleUpon, which got its start in Calgary in 2001.

True, this is not exactly the hub of tech activity. Then again, that's been a good thing -- as the company was able to refine its system while "under the radar."

What is the service? Basically, StumbleUpon has a toolbar that allows users to rate and write reviews about sites. A user can then press a button and find a cool site (which is based on complex calculations of the growing database of recommendations).

Sound pretty cool? Others think so, too. The company has snagged money from an elite group of angel investors: Ram Shriram (Google, Junglee, Zazzle), Mitch Kapor (Lotus, Real Networks, UUNET), Josh Kopelman (Half.com, TurnTide, Delicious), Ron Conway (FaceBook, StubHub, Simply Hired), Rajeev Motwani (Google, Kaboodle), and Ariel Poler (LinkExchange, Kana, I/PRO).

I had a chance to interview the co-founder and Chief Architect of StumbleUpon., Garrett Camp.

And he does have an interesting bio:

"An adaptive information systems researcher, Garrett holds a master's degree in software engineering from the University of Calgary. His research has focused on evolutionary algorithms, knowledge retrieval, and web usability."

Now, for the interview:

What's your take on Google's new custom search product? Where do you think Google is taking it?

The new Google Co-op looks much better, letting people create a custom search engine much like Rollyo. The revenue sharing via AdSense is also interesting since it will let publishers profit when their content is queried. With further aesthetic customization I can see a lot of webmasters using this before moving up to an enterprise search appliance.

You've talked about how social search will be a big factor in 2007.

I think social search will take off in 2007 because social networking has become ubiquitous, and integrating it with content retrieval systems is the next logical step.
Currently the experience offered by MySpace, Friendster and other online networks is compelling, but often not useful outside of an entertainment context.

Systems like StumbleUpon, Digg and del.icio.us are now integrating social interaction with content discovery, and helping people find better content by leveraging recommendations from friends and like-minded people.

How does Google play there?

As far as Google, while they haven't directly entered into social search, they have included social and personalized features in recent product updates. The Google Personalized Home has an "Interesting Items for you" module and the Google toolbar now has "Send to" functionality - both social elements. Google is definitely thinking about recommendation and social search.

And about your new product?

Our new product, StumbleUpon Search Reviews, integrates our database of 7 million reviewed Web pages with existing search engines - so you can see who likes the pages you've found through Google or Yahoo!. This makes searching more social and meaningful, since it lets you connect with others who liked the same content. Search Reviews is now available to all Firefox users, and is coming soon to IE as well.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook. He operates InvestorOffering.com.

On a rather slow news day and week for Yahoo! and in the backdrop of rumors about Google buying YouTube for $1.6 billion, and MySpace founder demanding a probe into MySpace sale to News Corp, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) shares gained some ground today and finished the week on an upbeat note. Yahoo! shares closed at $25.47, up 29 cents or 1.15%.

The only thing of interest I found today was more information on local search trends. I have previously mentioned that Yahoo! and Google are neck in neck in local search market share.

Today I found some information about overall social local trend and Yahoo!'s specifically. According to this data, the growth of local search that is confined to directories has been relatively flat over the last year. However, social local search, that is, looking for user generated local content such as Yahoo! Local, has grown much more significantly.

Lately, I've been writing about how major companies, like Yahoo, have been making key hires to develop the next phase in search – that is, "social search." Basically, this uses sophisticated Web 2.0 techniques and user generated content to build better systems. And, more importantly, it's a way to try to beat the king of search, Google.

Well, there are some interesting upstarts in this sector, such as OOZM. It's tagline: "More relevant results because they are rated by REAL people, not Robots."

I interviewed the creator of OOZM, Guna Deivendran. In fact, he is selling his site on eBay. Yes, as is typical in the Web 2.0 field, Guna's strength is in building new technologies, not building businesses.

You can check out the eBay listing here.

According to Guna:

I recently wrote a BloggingStocks post about Yahoo's recent deal with Zillow, an online real estate company. My take was that the deal was a sign that Yahoo is getting serious about mining its huge amount of data. The data, in fact, is getting much more interesting with such new social networking properties as Flickr, Del.icio.us and so on.

Well, this week, Yahoo hired Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan, who will become a vice president and Yahoo research fellow. He is certainly a brain, having worked as a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-founded the Data Mining Institute. There is also a scholarly paper trail, with over 150 technical papers, as well as a definitive book on data mining, Database Management Systems.

Although, he does venture into the real world. In the late 1990s, for example, he co-founded a collaborative software company, called QUIQ.

You can get more detail on him at his web site.

Basically, his mandate will be to push "social search." Think of this as leveraging the "wisdom of crowds."

That is, as user-generated-content grows – with things like videos, blogging and even Yahoo Answers – search is ready for major change. True, Google's PageRank is solid, but it will probably not be the method for the long haul.

So, while Microsoft and Yahoo greatly lag Google in the search game, there is still hope. And, it probably lies in academics who are pioneering data mining.

Cutting through all the buzz about the New Netscape (which we'll continue to talk about, I'm sure), there has also been a lot of news today about social networking and social search. And for some reason the buzz is all centered on your Yahoo!s, your Facebooks, your MySpaces. No one is really including Time Warner in that category.

And yet ... everything Time Warner is really honing in on now, in the company's internet divisions, is about taking advantage of the social nature of its audience (and really: what is AOL but a bunch of people who love to chat with one another via email, IM, and chatrooms?). Netscape's hugely viral strategy is just one more in a long line of highly democratic media, from AIMPages to this very blog before you.

Investors wonder, wonder, wonder. Today the stock ticked up a teensy bit on the news of the New Netscape, 14 cents to $17.11. I know a lot of you will say "no" but ... is this a buying opportunity? Are investors failing to key in to the opportunities Time Warner is seizing? Or is it just that the conglomerate is to big and unwieldy to be managed by the monstrous and multiple personalities at the helm? I keep asking myself, is Time Warner too cheap to pass up?

Yahoo! and Netscape, oh my! Both are diving head first into the concept of "social search," integrating the mysterious ranking systems of the search engine with the cool democratic nature of the social bookmarking site. As Time Warner was preparing to launch its beta version of the new Netscape, Yahoo! was talking about integrating del.icio.us and flickr, two very very grassroots-y and user-driven properties, with the unknowable algorithms behind its search engine.

Jeff Weiner of Yahoo! says his social search will "tap the untapped authority of users" while Jonathan Miller of Netscape says "We want to marry the great editorial skill of humans and what systems and software can do to create something that is different and better."

These ideas are good and pretty but I have to wonder: how is this any different from how Google has given more weight to blogs in its search engines? How is this different from giving weight to incoming links (which are the most democratic of all democracies)? Yahoo! thinks I am the untapped authority, but really, I'm quite respectably tapped with some 8000 visitors a day to my personal blog: all through the power of my content. And I'm just the tip of the iceberg, other bloggers who fit the category are cashing checks from Google every month.

It's all lovely, and fun, and a good idea. But social search is just a new way of creating a network effect, and the end result will be no different whether you're getting popular through votes or links from your ever-expanding group of friends.