
The Slow Erosion of Google Search - manchesterseo
http://bokardo.com/archives/google-erosion/
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jhawk28
I am not a fan of Facebook, I have never used Twitter, I am sure there are
lots of others like me. There has been a lot of talk about semantic search
over recent years, but just that TALK.

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vaksel
the thing is...even if Facebook or Twitter actually do it...there is nothing
to stop Google from utilizing that same data themselves to power their own
version of search.

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silentOpen
Twitter's firehose is license-only. Facebook is a walled garden. There's a lot
that Google can't necessarily reach for free.

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derefr
If it really is valuable, I don't think Google would have a problem paying
however much a license costs.

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chollida1
> If it really is valuable, I don't think Google would have a problem paying
> however much a license costs.

I'd agree but keep in mind that their data may not be available. Facebook has
signed an advertising agreement with Microsoft and twitter has their own
search engine that they bought.

If they thought having google crawl their data would cost them revenue then
you can be sure they wouldn't let google access it for any amout of money.

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ryanwaggoner
_So the question is: how many searches are real-time searches? 10%? 20% 30%?_

Try something closer to .001%. Twitter's monthly search volume is probably
about equal to what Google gets in the space of a few minutes.

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garply
I sort of think of Google as a channel changer for the TV. When I need to go
from one place to another, I use the remote, but the bulk of my time is not
spent changing channels - it's spent consuming the media that I'm interested
in.

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jsdalton
Agreed. The article implies that we all spent our time "hanging out" on Google
before Facebook and Twitter came along. That's never been the case though. For
better or worse Google has been and is just an extremely useful utility.

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mikeyur
My dependence on Google kind of scares me a bit. I don't just use it for
search, it's my calculator, converter (currency, temperature, etc.) and many
more things.

And even if I chose to do those things manually (such as temperature
conversion) - I could only think of going to google first to get the formula.
I'm just glad Google is there to make my life easier.

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nostrademons
It's my search engine, calculator, converter, stock-quote-checker, e-mail
client, word processor, spreadsheet, chat client lately, local business
directory, atlas, and employer. Hrmm. That makes it far more dominant than
Microsoft ever was...

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ryanwaggoner
The author's main premise seems to be that since people are already on Twitter
and Facebook, they'll just use that to search instead of Google. Aside from
the fact that the results would be terrible, most people have Google search in
their browser, which is all of 30 pixels away from the Facebook and Twitter
search fields. Plus, I know that I'll be more likely to get the results that I
need.

People are way too wrapped up in finding the next Google-killer.

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aswanson
I am a former Facebook skeptic, but after playing around with it a little I
understand it's appeal in connecting and updating with friends and family.
Don't know how they will monetize it, but when they find the right model, it's
going to be epic. I no longer doubt it can be bigger than google -- in fact it
almost certainly will be.

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bokardo
Hey folks, thanks for the feedback. The reason why I titled the piece "slow
erosion" is that this will take years...I know how valuable Google is for
fact-based searches. But slowly, social search and in-context advertising will
gain, not because Google will get worse, but because people will be starting
from a different place. They'll start on Twitter or Facebook.

The key insight is that people trust others for certain types of information
such as recommendations. A single recommendation from a friend is much more
powerful than a list of restaurants Google will give you. "Hey, I know you and
I know you will like this restaurant". You could argue that Google will
eventually know a lot about us (they do already), but the fact is that social
interaction trumps reference material in a lot of cases.

So this will probably take years, and many of the arguments against are that
right now Google is better. No denying that...but have you seen the ads on
Facebook lately? They're pretty stinky, but twice as good as they were even
months ago.

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TweedHeads
Try finding this on twitter:

\- who was Joan of Arc

\- the first movie of Elijah Wood

\- the capital of Somalia

\- atomic number of Molybdenum

Twitter search is good for personal interaction.

Google search is good for everything else.

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aswanson
I would go to wikipedia for all of those.

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nostrademons
Luckily, the first or second result of a Google search for each of those links
to Wikipedia. I find it's faster to do a Google search and click on the
Wikipedia link than it is to go to Wikipedia and hit Search.

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dsil
Search for:

wiki Joan of Arc

wiki Elijah Wood

wiki Somalia

wiki Molybdenum

