It’s starting to look like a triple rainbow. What does it mean?
Searchenginland is reporting that Google is advertising a special event on September 8th titled Search On.
Update: Oh! I got invited! Invitation pasted below.
The invite says:
We invite you to join us on Wednesday, September 8, to share our latest technological innovation and to get an inside look at the evolution of Google search. Speakers include:
- Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience
- Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management
- Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer
- Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer
It’s an event you won’t want to miss.
The Event URL ends in /searchmtv/2010 and the location of the announcement isn’t at Google HQ, it is at the MOMA. MTV? MOMA?
It has been useful in the past to see what the speakers have been up to lately to get an idea what the event is all about. For instance, before the Voice Actions event, Hugo Bara and Michael LeBeau were talking up Voice search.
Richard Brant has already done some of the legwork:
The event is headlined by Marissa Mayer and includes Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management; Ben Gomes, Distinguished Engineer; and Othar Hansson, Senior Staff Software Engineer. These are software folks.
Wright is product manager for Web search. She was included in a recent article in SearchengineLand.
In an article in the San Jose Mercury News, Mayer described Gomes as the company’s “search czar.”
In May 2009, O’Reilly Radar did an interview with Hansson, who described himself as part of Google’s search user interface group, and head of a project on search microformat data. OK, that’s essentially data — like product reviews, product prices and information — that Webmasters can provide in a specific format so that Google can improve search results when you want to find, say, a printer with certain features and good reviews in a specific price range.
SearchEngineLand thinks it’s probably a general update on things Google is doing in search.
I hope there is some substance to this announcement. If not, Google is going to lose some of the excitement cachet that they are building up. The last couple events have been borderline exciting and search isn’t exactly an iPod event.