After a whirlwind day of discussions, negotiations, steps forward, backwards and sidewise, all of a sudden the office starts to grow quieter as five o’ clock approaches. “Goodnight, see you tomorrow.” “Thanks for your help today.” “We’ll make that a priority tomorrow.” The door opens and shuts several times until the sounds of activity are replaced by the hum of passing cars on route home.

Alone, I log on to my favorite social networks to learn how my wider sphere of “friends” made out today. Social networking has become the new neighborhood “Cheers” bar and its habit forming, cheap, and delightfully low-cal. It’s not about technology or wanting to be online constantly. It’s about wanting to connect and share.

On Facebook a childhood friend who lives in the UK is celebrating her daughter’s birthday in Spain and has posted photos, and a friend on Saltspring Island has posted a video of herself on guitar playing her newly written song. On Twitter someone named “Lace my Heart” is “following” me. (Yikes) On another site there are requests for “Linking Up” from those in a similar business space as mine who want to exchange ideas. I hang out there a little longer before heading to my favorite news sites. Who would have ever figured we could have all the friends, business contacts, opinions and news we wanted from all over the world so immediately at our fingertips?

In 58 minutes, after loading the office dishwasher and doing a quick vacumn (something a business consultant told me as CEO I shouldn’t do) I head to my car thinking how amazing it is that the diversity the Internet offers today has been created in just over 6,000 days?

I wonder what the next 6,000 days are going to be like?

Will we live on a mobile platform where permission-based, personalized messages are sent by marketers through our social networks? 12 million mobile subscribers accessed their social networks over their phone this past year, and according to Nielsen mobile usage of social networking sites grew 260% in the US during 2008. Mobile web usage is driven by the adoption of smart phones which will reach a saturation level soon. I wonder if some day there will be an application you can download which ties your smart phone together with the home robot so that dinner is cooked when you get home?

While the metrics show that social networking sites eclipsed email in global reach at 68.4% vs 64% in February 2009 the real impact of social media far outweighs the story told by numbers.

Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, a pioneering company in the browser market in 1994, has reentered the internet search market with his announcement to back a new startup, Rockmelt, aimed at building a new internet browser.

Rockmelt was cofounded by Tim Howes a former employee of Netscape, along with Eric Vishria. When asked what was going to be different about this new browser Andreessen was tight lipped, afterall he has learned by experience the competitive tactics of his foes.

The web has become central to all our lives and our browser (or entry point) for all our interactions is increasingly becoming an important choice for consumers. The search giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft know how important this space is to their success in the search space.Microsoft lost its dominant position by not upgrading Internet Explorer allowing new entrants like Mozilla into the market.

Mozilla’s innovative Firefox browser, touted as an open-source success, has managed to grab 24% of the browser market since its launch in 2004. That is 300 million people around the globe entering web search through its portal. Firefox’s success is due largely to its focus on security and speed of delivery. Their success drove Microsoft and Apple to upgrade Safari, and Google to introduce its Chrome browser – a lightening speed browser designed to run complex web applications.

But the real browser battle will be fought in the mobile space where wifi and search will collide in a race to deliver multi-application friendly browsers. Mobile browsing is still a painful experience at this point though Opera is getting good reviews.

There is lots of opportunity for innovation and browser competition is good to ensure an open market and that neither of the giants can tilt the market to allow the favoring of their products and applications. Afterall the search giant coffers are filled when their applications like Gmail, maps and search services are more readily used and this is tied to browser experience that is foremost fast, easy, standardized, and secure in a multi-platform setting.

Could the man who successfully launched the first browser on the internet that garnered over 90% of search traffic lead the top spot again? Time will tell.

After starting with ‘MSN Search’ and then moving to ‘Live Search’, Microsoft made yet another attempt to beat Google in the search engine war with the launch of Bing – the “decision engine” in May 2009. However, based on industry reviews Bing is not a show-stopping disruptive technology, and in fact, has only some new features and a new name; hardly enough to capture a sizeable market share from the formidable search giant, Google.

Despite the luke warm response to Microsoft’s rechristened search engine Bing, it has managed to increase its total search market share both in terms of search penetration (May: 13.7% to 16.7% in June) and share of search result pages (May: 9.1% to 12.1% in June) according to Comscore. The search sector is a huge market so this increase is very significant. Rumor has it that Microsoft spent over 80 million dollars in marketing to promote Bing.

 Since the launch of Bing there have been some other very interesting developments in search. In fact, the buzz in the search industry was just settling when the possible alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo, long considered dead, resurfaced. Microsoft and Yahoo, two of the most potent challengers to Google’s search dominance, this month officially agreed on a 10 year search deal. There are two important aspects of the deal which are worth noting as they could change the search arena in days to come.

1.Microsoft will acquire an exclusive license to Yahoo’s core search technologies and is hoping to use it to better Bing. This could effectively mean better and more relevant search results, the prime reason behind Google’s success.

2. Microsoft’s Bing search algorithm will power both organic and paid search platform on Yahoo and Bing itself.

The partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo has inescapably altered the search industry landscape. This deal also means that Google’s attempt to get Yahoo paid search has come to a full stop; at least for the near future.

The Microsoft-Yahoo search deal will have major repercussions for the search industry because Yahoo and Bing carry a lot of weight and together they will be powered by Bing. Search marketers and advertisers will have to align their strategies and offerings to keep themselves ahead in the game. Some of the important points to be considered would be:

1. Search engine optimization for Bing is worth the time and money because even if you go by conservative estimates, together they command 28% of the market share (Comscore)

2. Leaving Bing out of your paid search campaign (PPC) is not a sensible choice.

3. Getting listed on Yahoo and Bing local will gain importance.

4. Paying more attention to Bing’s webmaster tools has become a necessity as there is a risk Yahoo site explorer will be left by the way-side.

While Google still continues to dominate the search landscape with over 70% of all search traffic, it is now clear that ignoring Bing in one’s overall online strategy could be a fatal mistake.