Google word clustering and the UI plunge

John Battelle reports on Google’s recent demo of word clustering algorithms, which could force them to take the UI plunge:

What do I mean by that? Well, of all the major engines, only Google has strictly maintained what might be called the C prompt interface to search: put in yer command, get out yer list of results (Google Local is a departure, but it’s still in beta). Yahoo, Ask, A9 and others have begun to twiddle in pretty significant ways with evolved interfaces which – by employing your search history, your personal data, clustering, and other tricks – deliver more filtered and intentional results (though it is still arguable if they are more relevant).

Link courtesy of Alex.