
Google’s growing problem: 50% of people do zero searches per day on mobile - adidash
https://theoverspill.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/searches-average-mobile-google-problem/
======
mrb
This article is so full of errors and inaccurate guesses, it is not even
funny. In reality, mobile users search at least as often as desktop users.

Error #1: despite Google explicitly stating half the searches are mobile and
"this excludes tablets" [1], the author accidentally included Android tablet
users in his calculations (he used the "1.4 billion" Android users figure). At
least 200 million of these 1.4 billion are Android tablets, so the number of
Android phones is 1.2 billion. This sets the mobile searches per device per
day at 1.04.

Error #2: the author's gross rounding of the number of PCs in use is
incorrect. It was already estimated at 1.5 billion in 2013, and said to grow
to about 2.3 billion by 2015 [2]. Just plugging this number into the author's
math, and this sets the desktop searches per device per day at 0.87.

So fixing these two errors alone and you end up with the conclusion that
mobile users search a lot more than desktop users (1.04 vs. 0.87).

[1] [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/08/google-says-mobile-
se...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/10/08/google-says-mobile-searches-
surpass-those-on-pcs/)

[2] [https://www.gartner.com/doc/1602818/forecast-pc-installed-
ba...](https://www.gartner.com/doc/1602818/forecast-pc-installed-base-
worldwide) (That's the most current estimate I could find —honestly 2.3
billion is likely an overestimate because they didn't forecast the tablet
growth, but if it is anywhere above 1.85 billion my point and math stands).

~~~
charlesarthur
Thanks for your comments. #1 Android tablets are an interesting one. Do we
think people are more active in terms of Google searches on Android tablets
than on Android phones or desktop? I'd suggest they're less active (in
searching terms) than on desktop. Than mobile - well, the received wisdom is
that Android tablets are largely used for consuming video, particularly in
Asia, which is where a lot of them are. It's an oversight on my part, I agree,
but I'm not sure they make a big difference.

#2 Gartner revised its calculation for the PC base earlier this year - if you
followed my linkblog you'd have seen the reference to its latest calculation
[1] which puts the number at 1.48bn in 2015, falling constantly towards 1.38bn
in 2019. That might get revised, of course, but the 2015 figure is probably
accurate.

~~~
charlesarthur
Ooops, left out the link to Gartner. It's this:
[http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/windows-10-does-
no...](http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/windows-10-does-not-change-
the-pcs-fate/)

------
MIKarlsen
This might be far out, but could it also hint that we are very unproductive
while using social media and apps, and in general not creating any value
(which to my knowledge are some of the biggest time-consumers when on mobile)?

I mean, when I'm on social media, I'm rarely cross-checking information, let
alone doing something useful with the information I find. So I don't need to
search. It's basically pure consumption.

Perhaps that's just the general thing about mobile - that people aren't
productive while not near their computers. Personally, I never use my
smartphone for anything then note-taking, and even that is a tedious task.
That being said, I actually Google more often since I got an Android phone,
due to the fact that the Google-search bar is on my front-page, and so I don't
need to open my browser manually.

~~~
jerf
There are studies that suggest that teams that take time out of the day to
joke and laugh with each other are still more productive than the teams that
are heads down all the time.

(I'm grateful my natural inclination has proved out to be a good use of time,
but now I don't even feel guilty about it, which is nice.)

If we were robots or Vulcans, perhaps socialization is a net loss, but for
humans in general it is not. If you are trying to optimize your productivity,
removing social contact is not necessarily moving in the right direction; the
productivity optimum is not "zero social contact".

Of course "social networks" may be low-grade or negative socialization.
Perhaps the fact it is "low-calorie" social interaction causes people to spend
too much time on it when they could do better by other mechanisms. I don't
know, really. I'm just pointing out that assuming social == not producing
value is an oversimplification, if you're a human being.

~~~
bad_user
I don't consider social networking to be about social contact, because the
physical contact is missing and most of the time we aren't even talking with
our "friends" on these social networks. A "like" or a retweet is not a dialog.

Phone calls, SMS messages, IRC chats or even emails are way more healthy than
whatever happens on social networks because they are bidirectional. And I'm
not even speaking about the magic that happens when shaking somebody's hand or
when receiving a smile.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I disagree. For those of us who use social networking more for posting updates
and discussing things with each other, it has lots of social-contact value.
The two benefits it provides that aren't _simultaneously_ given by phone
calls, SMS, IRC or watercooler meetups:

\- broadcast but pull (not push) communication; everyone (from the group that
can see a particular post) can join or leave a discussion at any time, and
reading it does not require commitment to active participation

\- asynchronous communication; I can drop a comment and read replies at my own
schedule, and there is no expectation for immediate response

And no, you can't really disconnect it from the other side of social
networking, i.e. posting cat pictures and news articles - they provide a
_social object_ , around which a discussion can form[0].

Complaining about social networks as "inferior" form of social interaction
seems like complaining about potatoes as inferior food because they weren't
around in Europe 500 years ago. Yes, living _only_ on potatoes isn't the
healthiest thing, but they are a decent food and even if you make it the core
of your diet, you won't get sick.

[0] - [http://gapingvoid.com/blog/2007/12/31/social-objects-for-
beg...](http://gapingvoid.com/blog/2007/12/31/social-objects-for-beginners/;)
curiously, this text now starts with an image that wasn't there last time I
read it, and that perfectly sums up my opinion on advertising

~~~
bad_user
Oh, I would never say that potatoes are inferior, as that would be the same
reductionist science mentality that has been making us obese and sick. In fact
a social network like Facebook is nothing like the potato, but more like the
Chicken McNuggets or the sweetened corn flakes or the soda made of high
fructose corn syrup, or the ultra-pasteurized and low-fat milk, or the beef
from corn-fed cows that need antibiotics because of liver abscesses that
happen for being fed corn and animal tissue instead of grass.

Just as with _fast food_ that depends on subsidized corn, ignorance and fossil
fuels, social networks like Facebook represents the industrialization of our
social interactions: _fast, cheap, shallow and designed for mass consumption_.
And make no mistake, just like how the food demand is inelastic because our
stomach doesn't grow bigger, so is our attention span as there are only 24
hours in a day, so the same strategies are employed by both sides, with
Facebook being the new TV (how ironic, almost as ironic as organic food being
industrialized).

And going back to the potato, we Europeans may have started eating it only 500
years ago, but the potato has been _domesticated_ 7,000 to 10,000 years ago in
South America. We simply discovered what other people have been eating for
thousands of years. No such thing happened with social networks. Or with
present day processed foods for that matter.

And you know, industrialized food and the modern lifestyle has been making us
obese and gave us diabetes. We might also discover that this modern lifestyle
is also bringing with it other gifts, like autism and I wouldn't be surprised
at all if some conditions from the autistic spectrum are also caused by humans
having shallower social interactions.

------
sputr
There is also another factor that may influence this statistic: most android
phones in the general population are slow as hell. While in IT, especially in
mobile development, phones are fast-ish. Developers keep adding features (OS
as well as app) when they should be doing performance optimization.

I have a 1 year old, low/mid range phone I bought because I just didn't have
the cash for a flagship. I have only the "most common" apps installed. Mobile
web is unusable. Opening chrome takes 2 minutes, doing the actual search a
minute more, rendering the site ... well, let's just say I have JS turned off.
Unless I don't have access to the internet some other way and it's really
crucial, I'm just not going to bother.

~~~
nilkn
I was recently basically forced to get a new phone because my Galaxy Note 3
had become virtually unusable from software updates over the past few years.
Common tasks would freeze the phone for seconds at a time. All animations were
laggy. It was as if it was running on 10-15 year old hardware, not 2 year old
hardware.

Just to be clear, I've experienced similar degradation with Apple products as
well (specifically an older iPad), but never as severe as with the Note 3. My
old iPad is still definitely useable; it's just not as smooth as it once was.
The phone on the other hand had just become complete junk.

Meanwhile my girlfriend's Nexus 5 phone has been on a roller coaster of
battery life changes. Not too long ago, an update caused her battery life to
drain to 0 in roughly half a day of light usage. Then it was fixed. Then it
was ruined again in the update to Marshmallow. She's going to have to get a
new phone as well because hers too has become nearly unusable.

~~~
tonfa
Did you consider replacing the battery? (beside the battery not aging very
well, I'm still happy with the N5 performance).

~~~
xeromal
Nexus phones are notorious for the rollercoaster of battery life. Before
Marshmallow, my N6 would be dying by 5pm with random, low-medium usage. With a
Marshmallow build from XDA, I hit 20% at 9pm. It's insane. The battery stats
looks roughly similar from either OS though.

------
kanzure
Using a phone for search is like sucking in information through a straw. Even
if you do find something, nobody really wants to setup copy-paste
infrastructure between their phone and desktop/laptop. Yes, I know about
AirDroid. Loading almost any page is going to be painfully slow, render
poorly, and then break completely. When I have loaded a page, I use ctrl+f to
search for whatever I was looking for, and I use a large screen to render all
the content so my eyes can lock on to whatever I am looking for. Going through
10 different results is just painful on a phone, and on a laptop I can do it
in less than a minute. Small screen and touch doesn't benefit me enough to
switch from desktop search to phone search...

~~~
ParadigmBlender
I always forget thet my phone (iPhone) offers ctrl-f page search
functionality. It is one of the options after pressing the share button.

~~~
reitoei
Seems like the logical place to put it!

~~~
chris_wot
In Safari, type in your search into the address bar, then scroll to the bottom
of the autosuggestion dropdown - the search is in there.

Completely unintuitive, I love Apple's design team, but it makes me aware that
Apple designers are mortal after all :-)

------
soylentcola
I'm aware that my own experience clouds my perception but it's still
surprising to me. One of the main uses of a smartphone for me (even since my
first Treo) is that I've got a "pocket Google". Messaging and social media and
games are all great but for me, having a pocket reference the size of a
massive global library remains one of the "killer apps".

I used to joke that smart phones are the equivalent of Penny's "computer book"
from the Inspector Gadget cartoons I watched as a kid. I remember being in
grade school watching that show and thinking how awesome it would be to have a
powerful computer I could carry around with me all the time and use to find
any info I wanted.

~~~
dhimes
Serious question: have you ever made a purchase because of (indirectly or
directly) an ad that appeared on a search page? (Maybe this should be an 'Ask
HN')

~~~
mattmanser
I would be careful of a self-answered question like this, I would suspect a
lot of people will say 'no' when the actual answer is 'yes' just because they
didn't even realize they were clicking an ad or because it's something they do
so rarely they think they _never_ do it when in fact they _very rarely_ do it.
But very rarely is in fact 'woohoo loadsa money!' for everyone involved.

~~~
lsaferite
I'm fairly certain that in the last 10 years or so I've never bought anything
because of a web ad or a TV ad for that matter. You could argue perhaps there
is a subconscious element that drove a later purchase, but even if true there
is no directly measurable correlation for the ad networks.

~~~
freehunter
One perfectly valid outcome for an ad is simple awareness. If I go to
McDonalds, I know the McRib is on their menu because a billboard said it was.
The billboard didn't make me buy one, but I know it's an option. When I go to
the store, I see a dozen brands of soda. I know Pepsi and Coke are popular
choices because of the number of ads I see for them. I've never seen a Mr Pibb
ad, so that brand seems kind of weird to me. For that matter, I know McDonalds
is a popular restaurant simply because they run advertisements.

The goal of many ads isn't to make the consumer say "wow I need to buy that
now!". It's so when the consumer is presented with a handful of choices, they
say "yeah, I know this brand." And is certainly is measurable, in brand
awareness studies.

~~~
dhimes
Do you think you have gotten brand awareness from Google ads? I think I have
(freelancer sites, for example).

~~~
freehunter
I'd say so, yes. Even seeing the name being repeated helps. I've never played
Game of War nor do I know what the core gameplay is like, but I've seen enough
ads to know the name and tell you it's a mobile medieval combat game that's
free to play.

The hardest part of relying on brand awareness in ads is you have to repeat
the ads over and over and over, and hope people start to recognize the name
before they get sick of seeing the ad.

------
junto
If I have understood this correctly, Google are losing out on people searching
for Yahoo, Google, Facebook and other large web properties, which people
either can't be bothered to type in full into the address bar, or are clueless
to the fact that you can type an address without using Google.

In which case, do these lost searches actually reduce revenue in terms of
valid as click throughs? I would argue that most people searching for Facebook
for example are simply going to click on the first Facebook link the results.

If Facebook really are going to advertise (paid) in Google for the search term
Facebook, then obviously Google miss out on a relatively pointless ad, but in
most cases, I can't see the loss here. Why would Facebook advertise for the
term "Facebook"?

~~~
0xffff2
Unless Google has a policy saying no one else can advertise for the term
"Facebook", Facebook has to advertise for it to prevent others from getting
their ads in front of people who are looking for Facebook.

Search the name of virtually any large company, and their website will come up
as both the first real result and the banner ad at the top of the results.

~~~
lacker
Not true, as two seconds of research can demonstrate. Facebook does not
advertise on Google for the term "Facebook".
[https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8](https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

~~~
junto
I guess that depends on your region?

------
eitally
I suspect this is a naive guestimate by the author. There are many ways to
search that don't involve going to google.com in a browser, and with the
combination of Google Now and Google Maps/Nav, people surface a lot of queries
through organic behavior. It can't be overstated, too, that Google is making
the majority of the money from in-app advertising, so that additionally
mitigates the decline.

If I were an investor, I might be worried about some aspects of Google, but
this isn't one of them.

I'm probably biased, though. I am constantly "ok googling" to learn stuff.
Having young children will do that to you.

~~~
Skunkleton
Also, it may just be an indication that Google Now is doing its job.

------
onion2k
Is 'searches per day' an important metric? It seems obvious that someone on a
desktop PC doing a navigational search for 'facebook' and immediately clicking
on the first link only costs Google money. Google get zero benefit from it.
Eliminating those searches would be a good thing (so long as people still use
Google for searches that Google can wring some cash out of).

Fewer navigational searches would increase the proportion of monetisable
searches; wouldn't that be a good thing for Google?

~~~
hodwik
Navigational searches still display ads. (I'm told)

~~~
jonknee
A search for "Facebook" currently has no ads for me. Same for "Yahoo". They
aren't making a killing on navigational searches.

~~~
hodwik
Are you sure you're not running adblock? Just did those searches and I see
ads.

~~~
jonknee
Yes, that was in an Incognito window and there were plenty of ads for other
SERPs. It's Google so it would vary based on tons of factors (user agent,
location, if I have a cookie, etc etc).

------
jobu
What I got from this article is that Google is making money every time I open
a web browser on a desktop, type in "facebook", and click on the top search
result. Now on mobile devices, there's an actual app for Facebook, and opening
the app is cutting Google out of the loop (and the Money). Is that right?!

If that's the case, then it seems pretty shitty from the advertiser's point of
view. Especially since Google came up with the all-in-one search and url bar
"feature" in Chrome.

------
tom-lord
I'm confused... How can the mode number of searches be 0.5?!

"More people perform half a search every day, than any other amount." \--
What?!

I guess maybe that's more like "the mode over 30 days, divided by 30"?

~~~
mcherm
He never said that the mode was 0.5... he said "The mode (most common number)
will be below [1 search per day] too."

And it is. According to his numbers, the mode is precisely 0. The most common
number of searches is zero... more people do 0 Google searches in a day than
do 7 or 1 or any other specific number.

This is not a USEFUL statistic, but (according to this data) it is accurate.

~~~
tom-lord
> According to his numbers, the mode is precisely 0.

I was referring to the fact that the graphs - e.g.
[https://theoverspill.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/screenshot-...](https://theoverspill.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/screenshot-2015-10-19-13-40-07.png?w=584&h=356)
\- are using using mode = 0.5

------
jacquesm
That's no surprise.

Phones are a consumption device when it comes to internet stuff, not a
creation device and to do a search you have to enter text, which is (at least
it is for me) more trouble than it seems worth. I can wait with most stuff I
could do while on the move until I'm home, and I can use my phone to make
calls. I don't remember when was the last time that I used the browser on my
phone for anything at all. On those few occasions where I absolutely had to
search for something while on the move it's a small inconvenience to have to
boot the laptop.

If text entry were easier on phones I'm sure this percentage would go up but
since keyboards have been declared 'out' by the design departments this is
unlikely to change much.

Witness the signature lines 'apologizing for the brevity of this response but
I'm on my phone' and more evidence like that that people do not like to enter
text on a phone any more than they absolutely have to.

~~~
fokinsean
Then what explains relentless amount of texting people do during the day? I'm
not sure if typing text is the barrier for people not using Google search.

~~~
jacquesm
My texts tend to be cryptic and much abbreviated compared to emails. I know a
few people that are able to respond with texts containing punctuation and such
but those are the minority, the bulk of it is 'see you at 5' and 'pls bring
yoghurt'.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm pedantic about "punctuation and such" and spend some effort to do that on
the phone as well, out of a habit and respect for the person on the other
side, but I still rarely write long texts on a phone. I sometimes noticed it
takes me 20 minutes (i.e. more than a half of the tram commute to work) to
type a properly-formatted long-for e-mail, when the same task would take less
than 5 minutes on PC, so I learned to leave such tasks to be done when I get
my hands on a physical keyboard.

I do text and IM all the time, but that's because phone is a tool for
conversations, not because I like it. I always switch to PC as soon as I can.

------
bluedino
I'm probably an outlier but I don't bother with that many apps on my iPhone.
_I just Google everything._

Look up a movie? 'imdb spiderman'

Want to know how many calories is in something? 'cinnabon calories'

What's the football score? 'piggers score'

~~~
chris_wot
Given that 50% of people do actually search, then I'd not say you are an
outlier :-) The analysis behind this article is pretty bad.

------
skrowl
Google monetizes more searches & apps than just web searches. How many mobile
users do 0 web searches per day AND don't check their gmail AND don't use
google maps AND don't use any android apps that display google ads, etc.

------
criddell
Why is it a problem for Google if people aren't searching on phones? I'm not
searching from my smart tv either. Smart tvs are in millions of homes and
nobody is searching from them. Is that a problem?

~~~
scrollaway
It's a problem because the web is slowly being replaced by the mobile web for
a lot of the population (that is, a majority of internet-connected people out
there who only care about a few sites).

~~~
criddell
If my employer installs an espresso machine, it's not a problem for Budweiser
because we were never going to be drinking beer at work anyway.

If I pull out my phone, take a picture and post it to Facebook, Google hasn't
lost out on any searches, unless you are counting when people type "Facebook"
into the Google search box.

Why does Google expect people to be doing creating a lot of search queries on
their phones? (I assume a laptop isn't counted as a mobile device)

I could understand if people were using Bing on their phones, but they aren't.
Google doesn't expect people to search on their television so maybe they
should stop expecting people to search with their phone.

~~~
scrollaway
What you are talking about is the lost sale fallacy and it does apply here but
not entirely. Google is right to be worried. The mobile web isn't merely
_adding_ to the current web, it is slowly _replacing_ large parts of it, so
they absolutely _will_ be affected. Google doesn't give a crap about people
searching on their TVs because that isn't replacing anything.

~~~
criddell
The article talks specifically about searches though, not that people are
using the internet without seeing ads. A lot of mobile usage is people
scrolling through their Facebook feed. They aren't searching via another
channel and so Google isn't missing out on anything.

I can see the argument that using a Yelp app for example might replace what
used to be a Google search, but even on the desktop I think people are
learning to use vertical search engines.

From a growth point of view, the game may be over for Google but that doesn't
mean they don't have a lot of profitable years ahead of them still.

------
chris_wot
Uh?

1\. 50% of people do one or more searches on mobile. That's awesome from
Google's POV!

2\. The number of people who are using mobile for their Internet has exploded
in only a few years, many of those people still use their desktop for search.

3\. Many, many people still don't use their phone for anything other than
texting and phone calls.

But here is the kicker:

4\. Charles Arthur is extrapolating a measure of central tendency in a rather
foolish way. He's taking the mean average of the number of searches from
mobiles per day _for an entire month_ , then he's extrapolating that none of
those mobile users do any searches per day _for an entire month_.

In other words, he's saying that half of all users don't do ANY searches at
all, whereas all that he can say is that on some days, some users don't do any
Google searches on their mobile device.

And if that's all his statistics are showing, then I'm not exactly blown away
with this insight.

~~~
charlesarthur
"In other words, he's saying that half of all users don't do ANY searches at
all, whereas all that he can say is that on some days, some users don't do any
Google searches on their mobile device."

From the article: "who does what searches isn’t fixed; so someone who did zero
searches yesterday might do 10 tomorrow. But equally, the 10-searcher
yesterday does none or one or four today. And so on."

So yes. But on any given day, half of people don't do a mobile search. And the
numbers from Google suggest that the average across a 30-day period is less
than 30. If you think there should be a different model for how many people do
how many searches than a Pareto distribution, please offer it.

~~~
chris_wot
I probably need to re read your article, but where are you getting the
assumption that 50% of people aren't doing searches on any given day?

How do you know the spread of data isn't that there are 20% of users who don't
use their mobile device for the Internet for 10 days in a row, but then do a
lot of searches in a short space of time?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but by taking an average over 30 days, you
seem to assume that users do similar numbers of searches every day.

------
Spooky23
I think the real issue here is that a significant number of Android users in
particular aren't really "smartphone" users, they are phone customers who get
a smartphone for free.

There are a significant number of users who _need_ feature phones, get the
Mega Droid Ultra XVII for $0 and use it as a phone exclusively. When these
users "graduate" to do more stuff, they light up features. Your mom figured
out how to text, grandpa discovered Facebook, etc. It's not a computer to
them.

Then you have weirdos like me who are immersed in the phone all of the time. I
frequently (as in dozens of times a day) do research and other web searchy
things on my iPhone, and either consume stuff I find on the phone or handoff
to my Macbook. I know a couple of people who take it even further with apple
watch and alerting.

------
agentgt
I could be wrong about this but my theory is that search engines are not very
conversation oriented particularly google's. That is a majority of people want
to have a "conversation" and that for the mast amount of non-techie people
they would rather ask questions to a human-like entity instead of searching.
It also may not be technical reasons but language reasons as well. On various
social apps people can get trusted answers from their friends and family in
their language.

I have also noticed on StackOverflow/Quora there are an enormous amount of
questions that could have been answered by a simple google query. A vast
amount of these people through anecdotal observation are novice computer users
and English is not their first language.

------
asgard1024
Oh cry me a river! Computer industry wanted to create docile "consumers" who
don't do anything useful, so they could sell actually useful devices (for
example mobile with keyboards or netbooks with 3:4 aspect ratio) to
"professionals" for 10x the price, or "enterprise" for 100x the price. And now
you complain about the fact that most of the consumers actually are docile?

I really wish the idea of tiered pricing would die, at least to significant
extent. Can you imagine living in a world where everybody has access to
potentially the best, professional equipment for affordable prices? How much
more productive such society could be? I think access to the best technology
should be an universal human right!

~~~
tormeh
Common tech bubble problem: Thinking everyone's talented, and the only thing
separating us from greatness is distribution of tech.

~~~
asgard1024
No, I am not talking about talent at all! I am talking about the crap that is
produced for consumers, that is intentionally making them _less_ productive.

Does my mother, for instance, deserve a text processor (MS Word) that cannot
read save from one version to the next properly? Or doesn't she deserve a well
researched UI (which actually was in the original MS Word!), instead of some
modernist crap? Just because she is not a professional writer? These are all
things that little by little improve productivity.

Or take computers, how today you cannot even install an operating system on
your device. People should have right to tinker. To prevent it is making
people less able to do stuff, and the whole economy suffers as a consequence.
You really think that Eastern Europeans, who during communism often had to
resort to "doing to yourself", are more talented than Westerners?

The point is great (or the best) technology doesn't require talent to improve
productivity. Productivity improvements often stem from things that "just
work".

------
MCRed
I do many searches a day, but I use the built in search in iOS... pull down
from the home screen and get a search box. Hits apps, emails, everything in an
integrated search. The backend of this is "SIRI" (I believe it's the same
platform that siri voice search uses) and ultimately it may result in google
searches. For now.

My career has spent a fair bit of time working on search engines... google's
moat is that everyone uses it, it has the audience. Providing competent search
is something a company the size of Apple could replicate with some effort.

I thin the threat to google is real... I think google knew this a decade ago,
and that's why they bought Android Inc. and developed the android OS.

------
ionised
If I'm at work, I'm searching using DuckDuckGo on my desktop.

If I'm at home I'm searching using DuckDuckGo on my desktop.

If I'm travelling, I'm searching using DuckDuckGo on Firefox Mobile on my
Android phone (HTC One).

------
blowski
Depends how you define search.

In days of yore, people searched for the website they wanted - e.g. they
searched for Trello or Reddit in Google. Now they search the App Store, and
install the App they want.

Similarly, if they want to search Reddit, they just search on the Reddit app
where before there was a good chance they would search Reddit via Google
because they typed their query into the URL bar.

That said, Google have a lot of apps. I search for directions in Google Maps,
I search my emails in GMail, and for photos in Google Photos. They are all
searches, they are just not the kind of searches we made 10 years ago.

------
roymurdock
The author needs to clarify what portion of total revenue Google derives from
ads, and then to break those ads out by service (Youtube, Gmail, Sponsored
search), platform (desktop vs. mobile), and geography. Those stats probably
aren't publicly available, but it would be good to have a rough estimate so we
could have a more nuanced conversation around relative values rather than just
one big pot of "ad revenue".

Otherwise, you're really just fumbling around in the dark, saying that
monetizing mobile searches with such a low average daily click rate are a big
problem for Google when the reality could be that they've never made much
money from mobile search ads, especially in developing countries where they
are adding the most users whose ad clicks are worth less because they have
less disposable income than the average American or European. Similarly I'd
wager that mobile search ads are a very small portion of Google's overall
mobile business, and that Google never planned to make much money from mobile
search in the first place, understanding that building out the app ecosystem
and getting Android onto a ton of phones was more important in the long run.

People don't explore on their smartphones: they consume.

This as a cool thought experiment that could have been improved with more
insight into breaking "ad revenue" into meaningful chunks to see whether or
not Google actually cares about the slice considered in the headline: mobile
search ad revenue.

~~~
charlesarthur
"The author needs to clarify what portion of total revenue Google derives from
ads, and then to break those ads out by service (Youtube, Gmail, Sponsored
search), platform (desktop vs. mobile), and geography."

The author (me) would love to, but Google makes very little data available.
The only geographic data is total revenues broken down by US/UK/Rest of World.
There's also revenue from "Google [search]", "platforms" and "other".
Estimates about YouTube etc revenue tend to be calculations based on various
private metrics.

"I'd wager… that Google never planned to make much money from mobile search in
the first place"

Possible. As the article says, and has been repeated multiple times, Android
was a defensive move to stop Microsoft cornering the mobile search field.

"People don't explore on their smartphones: they consume."

I must introduce you to some networks called "Instagram" and "Snapchat" and
"Line" and "Weibo" and "WhatsApp".

------
ucaetano
There's a major problem with his calculation: the number of queries per month.

The latest available number is from 2012:
[http://searchengineland.com/google-1-trillion-searches-
per-y...](http://searchengineland.com/google-1-trillion-searches-per-
year-212940)

That's 3 years ago.

~~~
chris_wot
Bloody hell, it's even worse than I thought. Even if that data was correct
though, it's not showing what he is saying it shows.

~~~
charlesarthur
The figure given came from Google's Amit Singhal in October 2015.

------
patsplat
This seems a potentially shaky basis:

> guessing that 50% of those corporate machines, ie 450m, can’t make Google
> searches

------
rodion_89
Are his quoted 1.4bn Android devices all outside of China? If not then the
numbers for mobile and desktop come out pretty similar:

    
    
        1.3bn non-China Android users = 1.4bn Android users - 0.386bn China Android users [1]
        1.28 searches/user/day = 50bn searches / (1.3bn users * 30 days)
    

That 1.28 for mobile is pretty close to the 1.23 quoted for desktop

[1] [https://www.techinasia.com/china-386-million-active-
android-...](https://www.techinasia.com/china-386-million-active-android-
users-q2-2014/)

------
mark_l_watson
Just three data points, but my wife, my best friend, and I all do many voice
searches each day. My wife and I have Android Note 4s so we are using Google
Now, which is Google search with more context, and my friend uses Siri on his
iPhone, which is mostly Wolfram Alpha (right?).

Getting directions, searching for a recipe, fact checking during a discusion,
asking about the weather, etc. is all so easy using voice search. Slipping a
few advertisements into voice query results seems doable and may be a reason
why Google Now does not return more results via speech synthesis.

------
akrymski
Hardly surprising. On Google desktop most queries are navigational these days,
something that's unnecessary when using mobile apps (spotlight search). And
doing research on mobiles is a chore.

------
alkonaut
Those who type "Facebook" in the address bar with the intent of visiting
Facebook, do they ever actually generate clicks on ads? Read past the first
result? Is anyone even advertising on google for that search term?

Google has to make sure that people type "shoes" into their search engine
(Protip: don't) on a regular basis. I'm sure Google isn't too worried about
losing non-profitable "app-launch" searches which really all should have had
the I'm-feeling-lucky behavior bypassing ads anyway.

------
richmarr
Yeah, searching on a mobile keyboard is a pain. Hence the huge push to
intelligent agents (Siri, Now, Cortana).

We're currently in the unfortunate position to be using mobile devices heavily
but not yet having decent intelligent agents.

If you believe @swardley (which in my entirely unqualified way I'm inclined
to) this will be a huge battlefield over the next 20 years or so:

[https://twitter.com/swardley/status/641206424840896512](https://twitter.com/swardley/status/641206424840896512)

------
vthallam
Well, i think Google is definitely trying to overcome the problem with the
decrease in search whilst increase in use of social apps for information.And
it has released 'Google Now on Tap as the answer!

It's been a week i started using the new feature and i made hundreds of
searches indirectly through Now on Tap. This is an outstanding feature for
sure and i strongly feel would bring back Google as the winner for search even
in the mobile world.

Having said that, i am not sure how Google would deal with iOS devices.

------
kraig911
I'd like this cross-referenced with the prevalence of ad-words being pushed on
me like I'm a 13-year old buying weed for the first time. As it stands now I
search on google less and less. I'm not sure what happened, either I search
for less ambiguous questions or I simply know all I search about. But when I
do search it seems my first 5 links are not good, unless I searched with
something with an obvious answer.

------
eachro
I think part of the problem is mobile UI. If someone doesn't have the Google
search bar widget or the search app on their phone(android) then they have to
pull up the Chrome/FF to search. Pulling up a browser app will reload the last
page you were on last time. So then you need to either wait for the tab to
load before entering your search term OR you open a new tab to search. This is
all very clunky and inconvenient.

------
tmaly
I use the OK Google voice search and do "XYZ near me" all the time. I guess
many people have not caught on to these "near me" searches

------
Zigurd
Other than the Nexus 9, Google hasn't done much to revitalize the use of
tablets. This will hurt search numbers that are connected to people using
office productivity tools, and it will put a drag on Google supposed new
urgency to compete with Microsoft Office. A choice of tablets from multiple
OEMs that are directly comparable with iPad Pro would do a lot for these
causes.

------
varelse
The entire mobile browsing experience on Android is broken. It's slow, it's
full of distracting modal ads and videos that frequently lead to #$%^ing slide
shows, and to top it off, Chrome frequently crashes. And no, I don't want to
install web site X's app for a better browsing experience, gag me.

In that context, I don't find this result particularly surprising.

------
izzydata
Unless I'm on wifi doing searches on my phone seems to take too long to be
worth it.I'm impatient so I don't feel like spending 10-15 seconds per page
load. When I'm on wifi I'm also close enough to a desktop that has a full
keyboard so there is no longer a purpose for me to search on my phone.

I probably do less than 10 mobile google searches per year.

------
rayvd
For me (and as many have mentioned):

\- Browsing on the phone is kinda slow. Mostly unworkable unless you have a
fairly new phone.

\- Even if you do have a newish phone with decent horsepower, most pages are
unreadable due to all of the ads. Stuff crashes or just freaks out and I give
up or go to my desktop/laptop. AdBlockers make a _huge_ difference.

~~~
freehunter
Luckily both major platforms now allow ad blockers (as of iOS9).

------
ChuckMcM
Interesting question is "zero searches" or "zero searches through Google" ?
We've seen a number of apps (TravelAdvisor, Yelp, AngiesList, OpenTable) which
seem to have captured search traffic for their particular specialty. I could
easily see Google not getting any of that traffic.

------
nsmalch
This is why I know of people using phablets for the very reason of getting
more done because of a bigger screen. The reverse of phablets to get work done
is using several 4K screens or 'Bloomberg terminals' to do your computing. A
rare sight and experience to behold

------
vicda
Searching on mobile is tedious in compared to using a keyboard. I'd be more
inclined to use the voice search if it wasn't socially awkward.

Google has other avenues to work. This problem is more so a service designed
for desktop web experience isn't as easily usable on mobile.

------
programminggeek
It is probably worth noting that Google still owns a huge chunk of the
advertising ecosystem on mobile, so if people are living inside of apps, they
still make good money as people discover information and use computers.

I think it's a different model and user behavior.

------
hagbardgroup
People use mobile phones in addition to desktops. They might be doing a price
check on a mobile phone and then actually purchasing on their desktop.

They might be reading the news, which is roughly 50%-99% PR placements
depending on the publication, which pushes them down some sales funnel or
another. They're just browsing higher up in the conversion funnel. Searches
higher up in the funnel tend to be less valuable in terms of costs per click
than searches which are closer to the purchase.

Everything in the news is marketing anyway, and it's just as paid for as it is
when it's an ad -- often times it's more expensive, because access to the news
is rationed by publicists and PR firms rather than by the advertising
department. Further, the bulk of social media is the effluvia of PR as it
reverberates through people who talk too much on the internet. As far as
Google is concerned, that propaganda consumption is just likely to stimulate
more searches later on which can be advertised against.

The flow might be: Check Facebook App -> Click Gossip Rag Article -> See
fabulous new shoes in celebrity photo -> Order lunch on Seamless App -> Go
home from work -> Remember to Google "buy red high heels kim kardashian" ->
Click ad -> Price check, bounce (Google gets paid) -> "red high heels
discount" -> Click ad (Google gets paid again) -> Buy shoes.

When they are ready to buy, they will pay for the $10 click -- maybe multiple
times across different advertisers -- on their desktop or $15 app download on
their mobile phone.

The headline that this author uses is also really loosey goosey. Google's ad
products on mobile are also increasingly more biased towards generating paid
phone calls. When you search for a locksmith or auto repair, you want to get a
guy on the phone right now, and are likely to need to buy immediately.

So, this isn't really Google's "growing problem" \-- Google as an organization
is set up to use machine learning to figure out how to make money off of
mobile search behavior. The company is still learning what it has to do to
make money off of mobile search behavior and how it differs from behavior on
desktops.

Also, as far as Google's customers (advertisers) are concerned, if a desktop
search results in people subscribing to an e-mail list that they read on their
phone, the advertiser earned measurable results from the money that they gave
Google. If their customers don't like to buy on mobile or they behave
differently, campaigns can be configured accordingly.

------
Sven7
IMHO most new smart phone users haven't figured out what they can do with
their phones. It could very well go the other way - search volumes explode as
search gets better and users of search get better at searching.

------
kawera
Dupe detector not working? Same article posted yesterday -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10414798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10414798)

~~~
striking
When an article doesn't get a lot of attention, it doesn't count as a dupe to
repost it. (with caveats, of course.)

------
libraryatnight
This is funny to me, because aside from a texting device my phone serves
primarily as a quick fact checker. I'm constantly searching. Google and the
OED app are my favorite smart phone conveniences.

------
arbuge
This is particularly ironic. I remember the messages we got from Google
earlier this year telling us that our websites could be penalized in their
rankings for not being sufficiently mobile-friendly...

------
ddingus
My search pattern changed when I got a useful phone. The most useful was my
old Droid 4. It had the real keyboard, and I used the crap out of it. The
phone itself was no winner, but it could render search results reasonably,
which is what made the whole thing worth it.

Those changed a little with a Note 4. It's a much more powerful phone, and I
do still search on it, but touch input is a modest PITA. I cut back on
searches, but I have added some voice use cases too.

In my experience, people with powerful phones use them more. A lot of phones
out there aren't so powerful, and they keep it to social, MMS, etc...

I actually disallow FaceBook on my phone. It's a battery hog, and I've better
things to do. FB once a week on a laptop is enough for me.

------
stupejr
It's obvious why this is the case imho, typing with your thumbs suck, and I
don't want to say "anti-itch cream" out loud into my phone so I'll wait until
I get home.

------
pcl
I wonder what's up with those annual 15%-or-so dips. Maybe a religious
holiday? I'd love to see an X axis there. And does it continue to this day?
(The photo is from 2011.)

------
ctstover
How will this impact the time table to reach the googleplex singularity
godhead?

...

Or maybe after all they're just some guys who made a profitable search at
exactly the right time, then pigged out on an IPO?

------
shostack
That is indeed a problem given the awful quality of display ad performance
within mobile apps. App traffic is the first thing experienced campaign
managers shutoff on the GDN.

------
logicallee
this article seems very fishy to me. But can someone interpret this graph for
me -
[https://theoverspill.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/screenshot-...](https://theoverspill.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/screenshot-2015-10-19-14-10-44.png)
?

At first I just plain didn't believe it; but now I don't even known what I
don't believe. What is it saying with that connected, continuous red line?

------
ausjke
mobile is really for convenience, i.e. I need make a call, need find a
location on the go, need do some photo/IM/social-update once a while, as a to-
do-list and calendar, read some news on it, maybe traffic and weather, or even
read a book to kill time outside, but that's about it. If I need search
something else, or read something seriously, I still prefer my PC/laptop. When
thinking about this, I indeed rarely search on the mobile.

------
Kluny
There are so many "let's assume" numbers that are based on nothing whatsoever.
There's essentially no valid data in this article at all.

------
pervycreeper
If they care so much about search volume, why do they make me fill out
CAPTCHAs whenever I try to do multiple search queries in a short period of
time?

------
Shivetya
I would be much more likely to search on my phone if auto correct didn't. its
to the point that its sometimes more frustration than useful

------
catshirt
i'm not the type to call a title "misleading", and this is definitely not
misleading in the traditional intentional sense...

but, lets be clear here. a LOT more than " _50% of people_ " do 0 searches per
day. i mean seriously- wtf? "50% of people"?

"more than half of all searches incoming to Google each month are from mobile"
is the qualifier we are looking for.

------
noja
I do _tons_ more searches since voice recognition improved. I really like it.
Google should push it harder.

------
reoo
If Google has that problem, Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines have the
same(or worse) problem

------
annacollins
That's absolutely right, with all the apps on mobile there is very little
reason to search.

------
lawlessone
Mobile just sucks to search for things on. It's far easier to move to desktop.

------
a3n
Ironic that by running their app store Google have contributed to this
problem.

------
at-fates-hands
My only thought when I read this was that Siri, Cortana and Google Now are
getting used more. This means a lot of searches that used to be done on the
Google search app are now being made through other means.

------
ForHackernews
It would be super ironic and fascinating if Google's low-cost mobile operating
system was what wound up killing their search business. How long until they
start inserting ads into their app store?

