You could never say that Reiner Kraft lacks vision or inspiration. This unassuming guy with the soft voice and thick German accent comes up with ideas--and incredibly viable ones--the way Snoop Dog flows lyrics.

Reiner's recent brainchild, Y!Q was launched in beta last week. Based on his concept of "disruptive distribution" technology, he believes it will significantly change the face of search.

Here's what Reiner had to say about his passion for search innovation and what it means to provide information "at the point of inspiration."

Q: You've coined this phrase "disruptive distribution" technology and you use it a lot when talking about Y!Q. What exactly is it?

A: It's a mechanism for distributing search boxes all over the Internet. As it relates to Y!Q, it's an API for webmasters that lets them insert icons within their content so that their readers can access related information about that content without having to leave their page.

Q: So the distributive part makes sense. Why "disruptive?"

A: Because it changes, or potentially changes, the way people search. Rather than having to go to a special page to perform a search, a search box is always a click away. You don't even have to type in a query. You can, if you want to refine your search further, but really it's optional.

Q: How does all this roll into Y!Q?

A: The key to Y!Q is the idea of contextual search or relevant "information at the point of inspiration." People liked to use that phrase before but with Y!Q it's becoming a reality. The idea is that there is always a context to what a user is reading or working on. So if they want to do a search, that search will be related to it somehow.

With Y!Q, we're able to identify what that context is and provide search boxes right where you need them. Then a user can dig deeper and ask more questions without interrupting their workflow.

Then of course, there's the API that the content owners or webmasters can use to integrate Y!Q into their pages. Now their readers can click on the Y!Q icons and automatically find more information about a subject. So in this case, the user isn't specifying the context, the content provider tells us, "this is the piece" that the user is interested in. It works as fine as when the user selected the context themselves.

Q: I like that it's the user can specify what they want. That's probably appealing to a lot of people.

A: Right. The other thing is that if we tried to automatically identify the context, we'd never get it 100% right. We'd just be guessing. But because the user says, "this is the piece of information I'm interested in," Y!Q can get the context right on the first try.

What's happening is the information they've highlighted gets transmitted to our search where our algorithms extract the key concepts and give them relevant results back.

Q: This question was posted by a blogger who thinks content publishers could use the Y!Q icons to help generate ad revenue. He asks, "Are there any plans to add contextual advertising to Y!Q?"

A: That's an interesting proposition. Y!Q is a new beta product and we're planning a lot of enhancements; but first and foremost we're focusing on giving publishers more control over the display and content in Y!Q. As we develop new features, we'll make sure to post them on the blog.

Q: Another blogger asks, "do you think Y!Q will phase out once the novelty factor wears off?" and "do you think it'll be used as a serious search solution by working professionals, [not] just cool kid teens?"

A: Y!Q was designed to address two key issues: First, we want to provide convenient access to search functionality at the point of inspiration. Second, we want to push relevant and enhanced results related to the context and provide superior relevancy for search results. If we're doing a good job for one and two, I think Y!Q has a very good chance of being adapted and used widely. Users generally use the search tool that is easiest to use and produces the best results. So I believe that Y!Q will be gradually accepted as the next generation search tool of choice.

For the second question: I already use Y!Q as my default search engine in Firefox, and it produces more relevant results compared to other plug-ins. Therefore anybody can use it as a default search tool. I don't think there is a preferred audience.

Q: Tell me a bit about your patents. You actually have one hundred?

A: I don't know the exact number. I filed probably over 100, and so far on the order of 40 have been issued. It typically takes about 2-4 years for patents to issue, so they're coming all in gradually.

Q: Wow.

A: That was mostly between the time of '98 and around 2001 maybe.

Q: Are they all related to search technology?

A: No. A lot of them are, but there are many others that are related to different type of Web technologies, for example e-commerce or location awareness technologies. Especially the latter ones may become more important soon once GPS devices [e.g., cell phones] appear on the market and become more broadly used.

Q: Aren't you also finishing up your thesis?

A: Yes, it's about domain specific search and is based on what I call iterative filtering meta search. The idea is to leverage the search engine infrastructures to create a filtering mechanism that automatically helps you get documents for a specialized information need. For instance, we built a buying guide finder that helps you to find just buying guides.

Q: If I hadn't checked out your website , I'd think that everything you do revolves around relevancy and search! A lot of people at Yahoo! don't know that you were part of a German band and that you've composed over 30 rock songs. How do define yourself first; composer or inventor?

A: (laughs) I just like to think about new ideas. So to me, it's all the same thing. You create some music piece or you create some ideas or some algorithms to do something. It doesn't have to be specific to search but ideas related to web technologies in a broad sense.

Q: What's the biggest satisfaction for you in working in Yahoo! Search?

A: I think the satisfaction at the end of the day is that you've invented something that you think is cool and useful and people are able to use it and it helps them simplify things. That's particularly true with the Y!Q project. I think it could be a new paradigm for how user's search. Hopefully if people like it and use it a lot, it'll become the default method for how we search. If that could be achieved, then of course that's kind of a nice thing. You've had some impact essentially--you've developed something people will use now and years to come.

Yvette Irvin
Y! Profiler