I don't see 'search,' aka information retrieval (IR), as a solved problem. I went to the last SIG IR conference in Tokyo, and yes, the heavy hitters in the fie

I don't see 'search,' aka information retrieval (IR), as a solved problem. I went to the last SIG IR conference in Tokyo, and yes, the heavy hitters in the field were there to promote and present their latest research. It is no doubt a very active research field using machine learning techniques. Reading the papers published could give a view of the (academic) state of the art. Whether it is a good business strategy to challenge Google head-on is another question. Whether there is a sure way to learn and engineer said systems on extremely large scales is another question.