a few days ago, i read this boingboing post about the new google “search by number” features, which i discussed in my metadata class this morning, in reference to a question about whether web search engines really use metadata (clearly they must when querying these special purpose databases).

anyway, boingboing cited aaron schwartz, (who in turn cited gary price!) and my eye caught the following snippet in his post: “in their quest to become the command line of the Internet, Google has added several new features”

“the command line of the internet”

and i was like, whoa! yes, google is like the command line of the internet. rather than clicking links or buttons, google forces people to type text, because it’s easier. if you know how to type.

but other than their stoic search box, google isn’t really like a command line at all. but what if it could be? why not design a web application that mimicked standard commandline interfaces, but was delievered via the web. type a search term. get a few results with a new command prompt. and repeat. the history of each search process would be captured within a single webpage until the user entered a command like “clear”.

here is a mock-up:

“The Google Command Line”