The killer app of the Internet doesn't involve handing over your credit card number, but it may be just as insidious.

I have been rather amiss in my regimen of getting Second Hand Smoke up every Friday. Unfortunately, I came down with some sort of flu virus that has left me less than one hundred per cent. In fact, I have a chart somewhere which shows my gradual decline from a hundred per cent to less than fifty per cent, and back up, but after the series of e-mails I received regarding my Kandinsky Engine data, I think I'll pass on the opportunity to share it with you. Suffice to say that about the only thing that has occupied me has been searching the Web for various research papers and documents that I require for a particular project that I am doing. Fortunately, the experience proved to be an interesting one that I'd like to share with you.

Before I go any further, let me set the record straight. I got into this article because, I initially wanted to explore some technologies that are looking at visualizing the data on the Web, and analyzing it for search purposes using traditional computer graphics technologies. I will get around to that at some point, when I am sure of my facts so, there is a tie in with some of the 3D technologies you may be using today. Having tried out some things, I am pretty certain that we are a long way away from 3D Web browsing. In the meantime, I think this article will give you some interesting insight into the search engine industry.

Search engine technology, and the evolution of search engines is a big deal. Search engines have little sex appeal, but they are very important to the way we interact with the Web. With the increasing size of the Web, search engines should be the best guarantee of people finding what they want to find on the Internet, rather than what is fed to them by portals such as Yahoo and MSN . Inktomi provides the search databases for Yahoo, MSN, Snap , and HotBot , but a quick comparison of the four will show you the subtle differences between their respective search results. I am sure that none of you would be very happy if your ability to roam the Web was limited by the most popular sites, or the ones with the greatest commercial clout. In addition, I can't really see the benefits of e-commerce on the Web if it becomes difficult for small businesses to compete with their more powerful, well-linked antagonists. It just doesn't seem like the spirit of the Web, but perhaps there isn't one. Perhaps the notion that information has some value is a misguided one, particularly in light of the fact that most popular Web sites merely drag you in under the pretense of providing information, while in reality they are setting you up for a sales pitch.