In 1994 there were people who believed search was 'solved' thanks to Yahoo! providing a comprehensive index of the Web (which actually was doable for a couple o

In 1994 there were people who believed search was 'solved' thanks to Yahoo! providing a comprehensive index of the Web (which actually was doable for a couple of years) Then the Internet exploded in size so in 1996 there were people who believed search was 'solved' thanks to AltaVista. The Internet continued to grow and thanks to early SEO techniques like keyword stuffing, an opening existed for Google to fill when they 'solved' search with 'The Algorithm.' Now we're in the midst of search being 'solved' again via ML/DNN's. And I'm sure it will be 'solved' again and again in years to come. So to answer your question about if it's solved, you'd first have to specify which time? :-) Search is a very, very large space and will likely not be solved anytime soon. Also, don't confuse the business/tech press definition of solved (i.e. a dominant player raking in large piles of money and shutting out competition) with said problem actually being solved as in there does not exist a better way to attack the problem. Granted, when the business/tech world considers a problem solved, this often just means that the lions share of (known) financial incentives are no longer 'low-hanging fruit'... until a challenger figures out a way to blow up the incumbents business model.