Google Cultural Institute: A sneak peek at the future of search?

Future of search? Hrm...<p>I just tried searching for Mesopotamia and the only results was LIFE photo collections. This feels more like the way research USED to be. Back when you would find keyword matches in magazines/books/periodicals and have to pull out the microfilm.<p>It was more fun than doing a google search and reading the wikipedia article. I don't know if I'd ever use this for hardcore research.

Another interesting demo.<p>However, I don't think it's feasible to turn the "scraping" model search runs on now into this.

It reminds me a lot of the app "Circa" on iOS. IT the same sort of snippets for news. An interesting way to display research. Also, really nice looking.