Adam Herscher just graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from The University of Michigan (congrats!) and he recorded a speech from Google’s Larry Page who had this, among other things to say:

Finally let me just leave you with two things. Our mission at Google is really to build the ultimate search engine. That means that it would understand everything in the world, it would understand exactly what you wanted when you type the query, and it will give you back exactly what you want. In computer science we like to call that artificial intelligence. That you can type any query into Google and it will always give you the right answer, it will be smart and so obviously that’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, but as we get closer and closer to that. we have real improvements in quality and make Google better…

Google was able to enter a market because it focused on doing something better than everybody else. With their stock closing today at $222.29 it’s very satisfying to see them continue to push forward in the quest for the most relevant results. I’m not looking to work for another company but if I were, Google would be the type of company I’d want to work for.

On the Webtalk Radio show on Friday we talked a bit about the big three search engines and I made the statement that if Microsoft wanted to catch Yahoo and then Google, they needed to hire the smartest people on earth pay them whatever tons of money they wanted — let them sleep in money if they want — and find a way to perfect artificial intelligence. Whomever does that first will have the holy grail of search results.

Google is still dreaming. Microsoft and Yahoo need to do the same.

• Yahoo Answers integration to regular search begins
• Competing with Google
• Artificial Intelligence search “working beta” too dumb to find any search results, but it has a patent pending?
• Bill Clinton helps launch new Accoona search engine
• Clickstream in, links out?
• PC World calls Yahoo the most interesting company in search