There has been a literal barrage of news coming from the various search engine lately, so I will attempt to summarize the latest here.
Everybody and his brother has announced a new Desktop Search application (either in beta or coming soon). Each time a new one is announced, I feel like saying "Yada, yada, yada". So far, it looks like most people like the MSN app the best, followed by Google's app, with the Ask Jeeves app being in third place. When Yahoo! releases its DS next month, we will see where it fits into the pack.
The search engines are now scrambling to announce all of the new items that they are capable of indexing and serving in search results. Of course, Google's announcement that they would be adding thousands of library books from university collections to its searchable database caused a lot of excitement. Now, Yahoo! has announced their new Yahoo! Video Search Beta, which would index video and other rich media via RSS, much in the same way as podcasting works. Of course, other search engines, notably Google, intend to launch their versions of video search in the coming months, so more announcements will be forthcoming, I'm sure.
All of these announcements are crashing into each other on a daily basis, and no one's announcement is given a chance to stand out from the crowd. I understand the need to say, "Hey, we've got one of those too, and ours is better", but c'mon guys, you might want to spread these announcements out a bit, so the public has time to digest and remember what it is you are announcing. Otherwise, your big deal will be lost amid everyone else's big deal.