

Google’s Future: What The Search Engine Will Look Like In Next 20 Years - websagir
http://www.techieapps.com/googles-future-what-the-search-engine-will-look-like-in-next-20-years/
After Twenty years, Google won’t just provide you with what you are searching for but it could know what you desire before you know it yourself. That’s according to Marissa Mayer, Google’s 20th hire and the company’s vice president of maps and location services.
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fauigerzigerk
_“Can we predict what restaurants you’ll like when you’re in a new city? It
may not be that you search for pizza, but we know you tend to like pizza
places, or you tend to like more casual, loungey bars, so we can suggest
things.”_

Thanks Google for helping me stay the same forever. Just what I needed a
search engine for.

 _“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions.
They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next,” Schmidt said_

And you would be totally wrong to think that. Searching for things doesn't
work nearly well enough for Google to move on to useless suggestions that
extrapolate my current behavior in a completely uncreative way.

They are simply on the wrong track.

~~~
jrockway
_Thanks Google for helping me stay the same forever. Just what I needed a
search engine for._

So you'd rather be pushed in the direction of becoming the "average consumer"?

~~~
talmand
I would say that helping him stay the same forever would make him be an
"average consumer".

~~~
jrockway
Not really true. If he's a vegetarian and most people aren't, he's not
becoming more average by seeing vegetarian restaurants ranked above
steakhouses. He's just getting results that he's more likely to find useful.
(Try asking your vegan friends if they want a steak for dinner tonight. Do
that every day. See if they get annoyed at all.)

Same goes for programming language. If you're programming Java and are
googling for the Iterables library, you probably don't want to see the C#
version. And if you always click Java results in preference to C# results, it
makes sense to not clutter the top couple of results with C# information. You
never use them, after all.

(Imagine the kind of advice you'd get from friends if they didn't know you. It
wouldn't be very useful; you might as well ask a random stranger.)

Google is just a computer program whose config file you edit by using the
Internet. Not all that scary.

~~~
talmand
What you say is true, in that context. I guess it depends on what the group is
we're talking about when we're talking what "average" is. He could become an
"average" consumer in the context of a vegetarian; always eating what every
other vegetarian is eating because he's never offered an alternative.

As for your example with the programming languages, I would find it annoying
if it only always displayed results for what it "thinks" I'm looking for. I'd
rather define what language I need the information for. Otherwise, if I get
accustomed to the system then it would impede me from researching a new
language because I'll have to go on a crusade to convince it that I do indeed
want information about a new subject. Then it learns my new subject but what
if I want to go back to getting information about the old subject? Now I have
to convince it that, yes, I do want the information I wanted before that I
didn't want later that I want again now.

At least give us the option to turn it off.

I don't know where you got scary from though.

~~~
jrockway
Google reverses your solution. By default, you use less words to get what it
thinks you want. If you type more words, you get what you actually want. So
99% of the time, I get the Java results. If I want a Ruby result, I type
"ruby" in the query dialog and now all the results are relevant.

Most people are not power users and only type a single word into the search
box. Learning means that Google gives even novice users great results.

~~~
talmand
No, you repeated my solution. I stated I would rather it be that I have to
type in "ruby", just as you state. You are ignoring what I said about getting
accustomed to the system and forgetting to put in the "ruby" part. Then I have
to repeat the search. Then Google suddenly thinks I'm a ruby developer. Then I
have to convince it yet again for another example. It never ends.

Google trying to learn what it "thinks" people want creates the filter bubble,
which is the point of the discussion. It will not always give the most
relevant result on the topic but what it "thinks" is the most relevant to you;
but it could be wrong, a lot.

Plus, has anybody discussed how this stuff might affect traffic for websites
in general? If Google is sending different people with the same search query
to completely different websites then being the most relevant on a topic might
not be as helpful anymore.

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JohnnyFlash
This is why I do not particularly like last.fm.

I play a couple of metalcore band's and soon enough the only recommendations I
get are 2 a penny metalcore bands. Yes, these bands are similar to what I want
to listen to but how about some variance?

What Mayer is talking about sounds dangerous. I have a habit of looking for
pizza places so this is what Google would prioritise.. I do not want this. It
seems like it will skew search results.

I want Google to answer my questions and help guide me into asking the right
questions to get the answers I am looking for. Beyond that.. i'm good.. I
don't need anything else.

Sometimes I feel Google forgets its search is just that... search. An
application to find things. It doesn't need to be anything more.

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va_coder
20 years from now we'll be finding things using technology we've never thought
of, that was made by someone we've never heard of.

~~~
talmand
Also consider the idea that Google may not exist in 20 years.

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sausagefeet
The main problem I see with this is how unimaginative it really is. The things
they talk about Google can basically do right now.

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ttt_
>> _“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions.
They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next,”_

How convenient that they have millions of clients paying them to advertise
their stuff to do/buy.

Google, can you please suggest a better search engine that is not full of it?

Can you please not show me a local retail clothing store as the first result
of the query _'scala'_?

Can you please stop mixing your business strategy with the actual fucking
search results?!?!

Anyway, don't even mind me google, I'm on DuckDuckGo now.

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Teapot
20 years is like 200 years in internet-time.

Computers gets faster and cheaper. Eventually everyone affords their own
Search-Engine. Flavored to their own personal needs, with 100% privacy, and
with higher search-quality.

Spoiler alert! Google Search dies.

~~~
holri
You mean this one?

<http://www.yacy.de/en/>

~~~
kiloaper
YaCy is a fanatic idea. I encourage people to watch the FSCONS video.
Unfortunately YaCy will need a lot more momentum, developer interest and
people using it to become useful imho.

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talmand
I thought of a question from one of the threads I'm in for this article. If
Google is sending different people with the same search query to different
pages doesn't that reduce the value of being highly relevant on a topic?

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talmand
Why, at the time I typed this, is every comment on that article comments from
this thread? Most seem to have the same usernames but some are different. But
every one of the comments seem a copy and paste from here.

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nsns
I've never been a good Google user, never looked at their ads, always used
noscript to block them on other sites, and often searched for obscure, little
known information on a multitude of subjects. Google used to be immensely
helpful, but has become less so recently. Searching for somewhat obscure
information now brings up many commercial results which have nothing to do
with my search, which, BTW, is often considered to be a typo. In the few times
I've searched for consumer goods, most results were for outlets that do not
ship to my country, so useless. But I guess I can't complain, they're not
making any money out of me, and I'm using them for free.

~~~
jrockway
Google is not giving you bad results to punish you for blocking ads.

The reason why Google is trying to learn more about you is to solve the exact
problem you mention above. The Internet is getting bigger and bigger ever
year, and the average cross section of the Internet is becoming less relevant
to specific users. That's why signals like your search history or your
friends' Google+ posts are useful; they can narrow down the infinite torrent
of results to something that's useful to you specifically. This may be a
little creepy but there's not much else you can do other than to build an
index of the Internet yourself and tweak the ranking algorithm to suit your
preferences.

Google gets a lot of press for collecting your personal information, but every
site on the Internet does it. Go through your browsing history and figure out
how to ask the sites you visited to delete your IP address, cookie hash, and
user agent from their access.log. Pretty difficult.

(I'm not completely understanding why it's Google specifically that you care
about making sure doesn't have your personal information. Is the imagined
scenario that someday the government is going to officially hate people that
meet profile X, raid Google's servers to get user profiles, mine the data to
find people that meet profile X, and then hunt them down and lock them in a
concentration camp? If you meet profile X and the government wants to lock you
up for it, won't they eventually get you without Google's data?)

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holri
When software tries to be smart, it always fails. If software tries to be a
leverage-tool for the users smartness, it works.

Google is on the wrong track.

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read_wharf
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions.
They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next,” Schmidt said in
an interview with the Wall Street Journal that sparked criticism from privacy
advocates."

At least they're (sort of) upfront about it. That is advertising's _exact_
task, to tell you what to do. What thing to buy. What destination to buy. What
service to buy. And that does seem to be what people want, because most of us
sit on the couch every night watching a box tell us what to do and what to
buy.

Think of all the things Google might be telling you to do. Virtually all of
them will involve cash changing hands. Google will never tell you to go for a
walk or play with your kid.

