I would (and will) rather bet on human powered search engines that serve interest- or product-related niches. Example: I don't search for movies on Google. I search, obviously, at IMDB. I don't search for books at Google. I search at Amazon. etc. There are still some unserved niches out there, that lack a dedicated, human-edited search engine. - Dushan Wegner from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Bernard, I think you have addressed an important and timely issue. Will the human-powered search has its future? Thank you for sharing us with your thoughts, and it is a very well written. About my own opinion, I support the strike-back of the human-powered search. However, many (or nearly all) of the current takes (represented by Mahalo) have made a mistake in their strategies. They are trying to perform the same search as Google but using human power. This thought is totally wrong. Please allow me telling a little bit hint. Machine's strength is to tell people where the information is, while human's strength is to tell people who are the master of handling certain information. If the human-powered search is only going to compete the goal that machine-powered search is good at, there is no chance of winning. That's why this version of Mahalo or its likely peers may have little chance of success. But only if the human-powered search engines may change their thoughts, a new door will open. Google will n - Yihong Ding from FriendFeed MT Plugin