I was reading about a new semantic search engine called Hakia. Titus Hoskins wrote an article on Site Pro News about how semantic search could be the death of Google. I'm not trying to preach about how google is the enduring world champion of the internet. Eventually Google will slide into the background of the popular imagination, eventually. However, Hakia is not going to precipitate that slide. Why do I think so?

On the topic of semantic search, Titus overlooks Google's own efforts in this arena. The admitted Google efforts to develop AI are likely based upon semantic recognition. Google is not being blindsided by the efforts of startup's like Hakia or similar semantic search companies.

Secondly, they are acting as a derivative of Google. The clean, Google inspired website layout and their motivational phrase 'Excellence Only' are unoriginal attempts to follow the leader.

Another hint is that Hakia is running a Windows platform (based on their hiring of developers with "Experience required in programming languages of C#, C++, Java, ASPX, SQL, and .NET environment.". I think this speaks volumes about the quality of their people - which can not be very high. I don't think that any company will get very far on the internet if they rely on expensive, buggy, and difficult to migrate software platforms such as .net and Windows networks. It's a bad start.

I will conclude this mis-guided attempt at prophesy by saying that you won't hear much more than a startup murmur out of Hakia. I believe that the lasting direction for change to online search will come from new visualization models such as Kartoo, although I would be surprised if Kartoo is the company that takes the leap forward.

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