

Eric Schmidt On the Future of Search - Uncle_Sam
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/08/eric-schmidt-on-future-of-search.html

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protomyth
"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."

When I do a search, I really, really want Google to find me a page that
answers the question I am searching for. I think they really need to get back
to improving their search.

~~~
mortenjorck
To me, where Google stands to improve search the most is in parsing more
complex ideas. Sometimes, I want to search for a specific concept that may be
expressible in any number of different ways, but I don't know of (or there
doesn't exist) a standardized way of describing it. All I can do is throw
different expressions into the field and sift through pages of results hoping
my wording may have coincided with someone else's.

I've no doubt there have been many dozens of engineers on this problem in
Mountain view for years, but the last time I was truly surprised by the
intuition of a Google search result was probably 2002.

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sosuke
I've heard the argument that people aren't free thinking enough as it is.
There are many people that are willing to give up the decision of what to do
now or tomorrow, maybe it absolves them of the responsibility of their
actions. If Google starts suggesting folks do this or that how long will it be
till people start blaming Google for their mistakes.

Sounds like a science fiction novel to me.

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petervandijck
For the first time I'm thinking damn, I don't want to live in Googleworld
anymore.

~~~
dododo
instead of telling me what to do, i'd much rather google helped me make
informed choices about what to do.

~~~
derefr
Your basic disgust at the concept sounds the standard distaste people have
upon learning of the Compatibilist formulation of free will[1]. In "telling
you what to do," Google would just be acting as an extension of your
will—accessing all the same information you would access, and making all the
same choices _the same way_ you would make them. Just because the choices of
what to do would come from the external world (and thus be determined) rather
than from your mind (and thus "feel" more like you are in control of them) is
no reason to reject those choices: they are still yours, even if they are
determined.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism_and_incompatibili...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism_and_incompatibilism)

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MikeCapone
Original article:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870490110457542...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html)

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nanairo
While I have no reason to doubt the good intentions of Eric Schmidt, I think
this makes a lot more sense from Google's point of view, rather than the
consumer's point of view.

Being able to suggest things you may like is in a way at the core of what
advertising is. Currently Google does a pretty poor job, both because it's
hard to predict human behaviour, and because they mostly use (or used?) the
search patterns as a guide. But if you want to make money from ads the obvious
area to improve is to tell you what you may like before you even know it.

In other words, to me this speech sounds more like an advertiser wondering how
to improve the significance of its ads than a search engine wondering how to
improve searching.

------
DanielBMarkham
_"We're still happy to be in search, believe me. But one idea is that more and
more searches are done on your behalf without you needing to type. 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."

As Google knows "roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who
your friends are..."_

Stop the ride. I want to get off now.

~~~
10ren
_I'm sorry, Dan. I'm afraid I can't do that._

But seriously, I think he's just imagining something like a butler, who
anticipates your information needs, or at least your context and where you're
coming from. It's a kind of AI, as he says, moving toward _do what I mean_.

Unfortunately, these Frankensteinian quests have always ended up closer to
Office Assistant Clippy, in practice. Historically, mental amplification has
been a more fruitful approach, where the user remains in control.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I read somewhere a professor was saying that when you retweet, or vote up
articles, or any other of a dozen activities in which you're simply reacting
mechanically that _you are no longer an individual but part of a hive mind_.
Sounded a little extreme, but I get his gist.

Years ago I worked on a warehousing system. Used to be that folks would get a
list of stuff to pick, then go get that stuff, then get a new list. This
became more and more automated. Soon the computer was talking to workers over
wireless headsets, giving them step by step directions of where to go and what
to do.

I imagine the next step, after "where do I go and what do I do?" will be
people writing articles about how much more happy they are now that they have
a clear purpose in life. How the system actually knows better at what makes
them happy than they do themselves.

I liked the super-brain, immortal demigods sci-fi future much more than I do
the borg one we're actually getting.

Hey kid! Get off my lawn! :)

~~~
10ren
I think I see what he means, but upvoting etc isn't necessarily mechanical.
The mechanical conformity he's talking about sounds like social conformity:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>

That warehousing system sounds like GPS car navigation systems - but this is
still amplification (so far), and I doubt it can or will be extended.

I saw a reddit post about how army life can be very appealing, because of the
"clear purpose in life": the matter at hand is urgent, so you don't worry
about any other problems in your life, and the bigger picture is taken care of
by the higher-ups.

aside: I think the ideal life, as organized by a super-brain/demigod (or, from
a different point of view, what heaven would be like), would be still have ups
an downs (as in the earlier matrixes/ices, people rejecting utopia), but these
ups and downs would be more clearly meaningful to the person, like a composed
heroic journey, without the meaningless clutter. For people who had grown
more, it would include the meaningless clutter, so that part of the "ups and
downs" would be to discern the meaning. ie. living in heaven would be
indistinguishable from on earth.

~~~
10ren
Here's that reddit post: _Great post explaining a soldier's mindset, written
for redditors_ <http://www.reddit.com/tb/d19pt>

------
10ren
The single biggest barrier for me is questions that I could google for, but I
don't think of it, because in my mind it's just a thought or need, not an
explicit question.

For example, issues about cooking, while cooking. Something like a
(waterproof) iPad might be one factor in the solution, perhaps with
(excellent) voice recognition.

But another problem is that, when I have searched on question like this, the
answers are often not there, or buried amongst a lot of inaccurate/unhelpful
answers to the question - and it ends up taking an hour, and not actually
answering the question. eg. how to stop a rice cooker burning the rice (ans
didn't come from google: leave it 15mins after it's cooked + cook a larger
amount).

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kragen
Eric wants Google to be Marshall Brain's Manna?

<http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm>

(warning, the writing gets a little lame toward the end of the book)

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adamdecaf
This is why I've switched to third-party search engines, and resort to Google
when I can't find a result that works.

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pedalpete
isn't this what Apple bought when they got Siri?

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yanw
A technologist is speculating on the future and possibilities of technology,
it's nothing to be an alarmist about.

