Google 's getting smarter and smarter!

Internet search engines are getting smarter, thanks to a technological race among various leaders in the business such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and smaller firms which are trying to make a name for themselves.

The latest technology update on the search horizon is 'artificial intelligence'--a science used to make intelligent machines using computer programmes.

A search using artificial intelligence would take all words keyed in together to come up with an appropriate answer-- unlike particular keyword-based results thrown up by popular search engines currently available.

Sobha Renaissance IT (SRIT), an arm of Sobha Developers, has developed a search called "Icognue", which works on an artificial intelligence-based algorithm. Yahoo has built a specific search facility on its www.yahoo.in Website, which the company says incorporates elements of artificial intelligence.

Increasing revenues from search engines are driving players in this industry to come up with newer solutions. It is estimated that by 2010, revenues from Internet search would garner as much as Rs 40,000 crore ($10 billion).

"Currently, artificial intelligence is not being used by most Internet search providers," says Syed Yasin, the brain behind Icognue. Industry experts say current search offerings of companies like Google will be history when a technology like Latent Metonymical Analysis and Indexing, an algorithm that uses mathematical techniques for search queries.

"Using artificial intelligence in every search query made by the user would be the future of Internet search," Tapan Bhat, vice president, Yahoo.

Companies are resorting to newer technologies to differentiate and grab market-share from Google, which has cornered over 60 per cent of search-oriented Internet usage globally.

Newer search facilities include knowing the content of a web page as the mouse courses through the result instead of clicking on to the web page. However, they admit there is a long way to go. As Yasin puts it, "We have started gathering and indexing encyclopedia portals on the web for now but we have to increase this to the whole world of the worldwide web to be a force to reckon with."