While my reaction is still fresh, and I’m not influenced by what other people have to say, I wanted to share some quick thoughts. While this is not technically related to shopping search or vertical search, it’s still important to pay attention to Google (so much so that I probably don’t even need this sentence).

Anyways, in no particular order:

-Google really stressed search. The company has more people working on search than ever before. Search remains at the core of Google’s business. 70% of Google’s activities are centered around search. Especially over the last couple months – or actually whenever Google’s stock reached $400, I’ve read numerous pieces stating that Google needs something else besides search to increase it’s revenue and profit (and therefore valuation). People have started to ask when Google will see significant revenue from services like Google Video. I don’t think the stress on search was necessarily a reaction to this fairly new opinion, but Google was making the case that there’s still a hell of a lot of growth to come in the core business. Not to drink too much Google-aid, but as more and more information is created and digitized, we’re going to rely more on search. Google wants to be the conduit for which we find that information (as they’ve said from the start, they want to organize the world’s information). Also, as Google moves into more verticals like finance, health, autos, travel, etc., the more targeted searches will lead to higher advertising rates.

-Social Search. We’ve heard about social search for a while. At the Thomas Weisel Partners conference in March, Jerry Yang of Yahoo! stessed the potential power of combining social search and algorithmic search. I’ve talked about social shopping search in relation to comparison engines. I’ve mentioned social bookmarking sites like Kaboodle. For the most part, humans are social creatures. We look to others for advice. Some people ask friends which Thai restaurant to try. Some people ask a ‘techie’ expert which computer to buy. Google’s new Notebook feature launching next week has a social bookmarking component; take notes of interest as you search the web and then share with friends. Google’s new Co-op service is a much more blatant step into social search with Google admiting it’s not the expert on everything. And Google goes one step further than Yahoo! (or at least states this social component differently) in that Google also recognizes the power of partner participation and is working with Wine Spectator, Gapminder, etc. In other words, there are certain sources which you will want to subscribe to because you trust them for a certain type of query; these sources might also be called experts. One of Google’s examples for this was in its new Health Vertical where you might subscribe to the Center for Disease Control as an expert. In the end, anyone can be an expert…a source you trust because of that partner’s /person’s knowledge on a subject or becuase of that partner’s/person’s style. Social search can make algorithmic results more relevant.

-Mobile. I’ve started talking about mobile shopping with reports on Frucall and Slifter. As Eric Schmidt pointed out, there are more mobile phones than personal computers and the growth rate for mobile is faster than for personal computers. With such a small screen, though, mobile isn’t going to be about searching, but about finding. I’d expect to hear a lot more about Google’s mobile ambitions in the next year (and no, the ambitions don’t include becoming a MVNO).