Throughout 2001 we saw a continuing collapse of the search engine industry. Snap/NBCi, Excite followed Infoseek/Go.com into oblivion.
2002 saw a consolidation of search marketshare into the few remaining search engines in general and Google in particular. Large general directories like ODP and the Yahoo directory went into decline as users abandoned directories for actual searching. Looksmart quit being a directory altogether.
I think 2003 will bring some excitement back into the search engine market. Old warhorses like AltaVista http://altavista.com/ have remade themselves. Upstarts like Gigablast http://gigablast.com/ are starting to step to the front.
For a lot of people a lot rests on what Yahoo will do with Inktomi. If Yahoo starts using Inktomi results on the Yahoo portal it will help break the virtual blockade that a PR0 from Google can represent to a website. That will be big news.
2003 ought to be very interesting.
2:58:33 PM 
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