I’ve been paying a lot of attention lately to what’s happening with Yahoo and the internet search wars.  In the last year the company has threatened to make deals with several competing companies, the likes of which have names such as Google, Virgin, Microsoft, and most recently Jonathan Miller of Velocity Interactive Group.  It’s kind of an interesting tug of war going on between all of these companies as they seek to gain advantage in the marketplace.

In the last few months we’ve begun to see a shift from old style computing, to a new wireless computing trend that is just beginning to overtake the market at large, with cell phone companies creating new hardware and software capable of bringing a portability to the internet that wasn’t previously available to the mainstream public.  All four major carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) have instituted G3 connectivity, removing at least one adoption roadblock and opening the door for developers to expand the interactivity and features of their online products.  This growing regard for the internet as a staple of social existence becomes even more obvious when you note that the popular gimmick presents of 2008 are the micro notebook and the wireless GPS, and even more so when you hear that Sprint is already in the planning stages to build it’s G4 network.

That said, with the world wide web having become a staple of our society, we are reaching a point at which the internet will have to change to keep up with the times.  As we saw in the early 2000′s, the internet came into it’s own with the development of Web 2.0 and the advent of online social communities.  Web 3.0 will take this philosophy to a whole new level…out into the streets so to speak…and with that change I’m expecting that search, as we’ve known it, will move to a completely new level.

Imagine a search engine that brings you everything you’ve ever wanted.  We’ve begun to see in Youtube how websites can integrate sales, marketing, and services, but taken to the next level we have a complete integration of the community in one place.  Yahoo has always been a leader in topical integration in that its main page contains topics of interest that cross indexe the web; luring users to a smorgasbord of choices, everything from entertainment, education, money, religion, sex, music, movies, and many other items of interest.  Still, the sources are limited, since they still draw from Yahoos own stable of sites for material.  Google, always one for competition, has moved to a more unified approach in recent months, with the addition of iGoogle, a site where visitors can customize their site to get exactly what they want from the internet…and it isn’t as limited in scope as Yahoo home site either, with customization being a key piece of their business model.  But building even further up the tree comes Yahoo’s new Yahoo Glue…which while still in the Beta phase in India, is looking quite formidable, as it combines the best that the internet has to offer in Wikipedia articles, Flikr photos, Youtube videos, Music, Yahoo Answers, as well as relevant search, giving users access to a virtual encyclopedia of detail from around the world…and I’m expecting that business, medical, and travel content blocks will probably be added to this as well.  Everything all at once and at your fingertips for you to choose.  And while the simplest solution may still be preferable for some, ala Google, I personally want the whole kitten caboodle…I’m just greedy that way.

Looking toward the future, it’s obvious that there are going to be big changes in search…fights over who will own Yahoo are merely a sign of a growing internet in a state of change.  In the shake up, we may see a few new faces as well, since with change comes the opportunity for new blood to prosper in an economy struggling to find itself.  No one is quite sure what to make of it, but the people who own the right pieces of the puzzle will be the ones who ultimately succeed in this industry, and Yahoo is a key cog in the machine no matter how you roll it up.

To the victor goes the spoils.  Enter Web 4.0.