Visual search engines will be at the center of the next phase of evolution for the search industry, with Pinterest , Google, and Bing all announcing major developments recently. How do they stack up today, and who looks best placed to offer the best visual search experience? Historically, the input-output relationship in search has been dominated by text. Even as the outputs have become more varied (video and image results, for example), the inputs have been text-based. This has restricted and shaped the potential of search engines, as they try to extract more contextual meaning from a relatively static data set of keywords . Visual search engines are redefining the limits of our language, opening up a new avenue of communication between people and computers. If we view language as a fluid system of signs and symbols, rather than fixed set of spoken or written words, we arrive at a much more compelling and profound picture of the future of search. Our culture is visual, ...