We wrapped up a hugely successful SES Chicago today and now look forward to Search Engine Strategies New York in late February.

I came away from SES with many thoughts. One in particular was the presence of MSN at the show for the first time. And what a presence it was! First MSN had the biggest booth and the tallest booth. If the size of the display is an indicator of MSN's intentions, then the industry is in for a real fight for search supremacy. MSN had a large team. They even had a nicely printed brochure soliciting attendees to come to work at MSN search.

Clearly Microsoft means business when it comes to search.

Another little war that is going on is one that many thought had ended 5 or 6 years ago --- the browser war. There was a time when Netscape and Microsoft were slugging it our for browser supremacy. Many people no longer remember Netscape, but it was one hot company from 1995 to 1999 until Microsoft clobbered them into submission.

With this bit of history out of the way, I was blown away today upon seeing a two-page spread in The New York Times advertising Firefox 1.0. For a moment I thought I was back in the late 1990s watching Netscape and Microsoft going at it. One can learn more about this open source browser and then decide if it is worth trying.

And to be fair, Opera is yet another player in the new browser wars (Opera is based in Norway).

One knows that they are in a hot industry when skirmishes abound. The browser and search wars show that our industry is hot with growth sure to explode.