Merissa Meyers, VP of Search Products & User Experience has made an insightful entry at Google Blog that hints towards some directions Google will be taking as its Search Engine and search technology as such evolve in the next decade.

Interesting among the details mentioned are the reference to Search as a science that is in its infancy. Indeed search is far from perfect and there is a long way to go but unlike a field in its infancy, there is really little radical breakthroughs happening. Or perhaps its just that the breakthroughs are such that when they finally trickle to the surface its only a minor shift in search accuracy.

To state the points she mentions in the entry:

Search could become more ubiquitous, being a part of everyday devices so that you can get answers wherever you are.

Search could harness local information more readily to arrive to answers for ambiguous questions.

Algorithmic analysis of social graphs could also lead to more relevant disambiguation of queries.

The presentation of media will get more relevance and perhaps the UI will change to accommodate the larger real estate of new monitors.

Would be interesting to see whether the concept of link analysis itself undergoes radical changes in the coming years. For SEOs there are some definite hints to pick to the kind of changes that may be coming to Google.